Early Weight Loss in Parkinson's Patients Linked to Worse Form of Disease

If you knew someone with Parkinson's disease, you should be more aware of his weight loss and frame. A new study suggested that patients who experience weight loss in the early stage of Parkinson's disease might have a more serious form of the movement disorder.

HealthDay reported that Parkinson's is a chronic and progressive disease marked by tremors, impaired coordination and slowness or stiffness. At the time, the cause and cure of the disease remain unknown.

According to the background information from the study, Parkinson's patients normally experience weight loss. However, if the patient experiences weight loss in the early stages of the disease, it could be a red flag.

"I suspect we may be looking at several subtypes of this disease," said study lead author Anne-Marie Wills of Massachusetts General Hospital's neurological clinical research institute. "The patients who experience early weight loss appear to have a more severe, systemic form of the disease, possibly due to involvement of the neuroendocrine system or the gastrointestinal nervous system, while those who gained weight may have a milder form of the disease," she said.

The study was conducted between 2007 and 2013. The researchers examined data from over 1,600 people who had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease within the previous five years.

Seventy-seven percent of the participants were able to maintain their weight, nine percent lost weight and 14 percent gained during the study period.

The researchers found out that patients who lost weight had faster worsening of symptoms compared to those whose weight remained stable. The worsening of symptoms was slowest among patients who gained weight. The rate of survival was similar for all three groups but this could be because all were in the early stages of the disease, the researchers noted.

Per Medical Xpress, previous studies found that a higher body mass index (BMI) is associated with improved survival in Huntington disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). However, no study has been published yet about the relationship of weight to the progression and survival of Parkinson's disease.

At the time, the researchers admitted that they can't tell why maintaining or increasing weight slow the progression of Parkinson's. In addition, the study found a link between early weight loss and the worsening of symptoms, not a cause-and-effect relationship.

"Since this is just the first observation of this association in Parkinson's, we cannot recommend any changes to standard clinical care right now," Wills said. "But in my own practice, I try to prevent weight loss in patients, and I would recommend providers to be attentive to weight changes in their patients, even early in the disease."

The results of the study were published in the journal JAMA Neurology.