Parkinson’s Disease & Water Contamination: New Theory

For years it was believed that Parkinson’s was a hereditary issue, but the evidence is beginning to tell a different story.

An epidemiological study published in Jama Neurology links the disease to exposure to chemicals such as trichloroethylenean industrial solvent that has contaminated aquifers in the United States and could be driving the accelerated increase in cases.

Parkinson’s disease (PD), known for its devastating impact on movement control and neurological function, has been one of the great enigmas of modern medicine for decades.

Traditionally, it has been considered a predominantly genetic disease., a vision is being challenged by new findings which point to a much more important role of the environment and environmental exposure, including drinking water, in the onset and progression of this condition, as recorded in Wired.

This orientation has been reinforced by emblematic cases such as that of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, a carrier of a mutation in the LRRK2 gene that increases his risk of disease.

In addition, fundraising campaigns promoted by figures such as Michael J. Fox. In fact, more than half of the resources dedicated to Parkinson’s research in the last two decades have been allocated to studying its genetic basis.

However, when global statistics are examined, this genetic approach begins to appear insufficient.

In the United States, Parkinson’s rates have doubled over the past 30 years, and are projected to continue increasing by 15% to 35% per decade..

This rapid growth is difficult to explain solely by changes in human genetics, which evolve on a much slower time scale.

According to what it says Wired, This paradigm shift is seen in the growing support for the idea that it is not “DNA” that primarily determines long-term health, but rather the sum of all environmental exposures, from conception to death, a concept some scientists call the exposome.

Health, in this vision, is the result of a complex interaction between genes and environment, where genes can predispose, but the environment is the trigger.

The exposome includes chemical contaminants such as industrial solvents, pesticides, perfluorinated compounds (PFAS), air pollution and even plastic byproducts.

Although there are thousands of chemicals present in the modern environment, only a small fraction of them have been evaluated for safety.

In the United States, less than 1% of the 350,000 registered chemicals have been adequately tested for safety for human health, according to the publication in question.

This approach not only reorients research, but also prevention.

Measures to reduce exposures, such as checking and cleaning the water supply, limiting pesticides, or identifying and eliminating neurotoxic chemicals, could offer a more immediate route to reducing the incidence of the disease than treatments based exclusively on genetics.