Revista Internacional de Saúde Global

Socioeconomic determinants of Parkinson's disease for developed and developing countries

M.V.Shakleina

We set and solved the problem of identifying socio-economic determinants of Parkinson's disease (PD) by comparing the characteristics of different countries.   Econometric analysis of panel data on 117 countries for 2010-2013 showed that the nature of the impact of a number of factors depends on whether a country belongs to the set of developed or developing economies. For both groups, the incidence of Parkinson's disease increases with life expectancy and decreases with the share of smokers.

In addition, for developed countries, the incidence drops with increasing per capita consumption of fish and seafood and increases with amounts of fertilizer applied to the soil per hectare of arable land.  For developing countries, the share of rural populations and per capita consumption of alcohol and vegetables are significant factors, with the incidence of PD decreasing with the first factor and increases with the last two. There is also reason to believe that in developing countries, the incidence of PD increases with the level of education; this is due to a decrease in physical activity of the representatives of the professions concerned.  The findings are compared with the known results based on the study of patient samples for individual countries, and allow improving them. The results of this work can be used in patient selection procedures for early diagnostics of PD and are particularly important for developing countries where evidence-based recommendations has not yet been available.