Prodromal Depression and Subsequent Risk of Developing Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review With meta-analysis

Abstract

Aim: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder that predominately affects dopaminergic neurons. We believe that this pooling of data will help to better understand the prodromal nature of depression in PD. Materials & methods: We conducted this study in accordance with PRISMA guidelines 2020. Fifteen eligible articles were shortlisted for final analysis. Risk of bias assessment was also conducted Results: The random-effect model revealed that the risk of subsequent PD in patients with prodromal depression was twice as likely (odds ratio, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.02–4.08) as compared with a healthy population. Conclusion: Our meta-analysis concluded that the subsequent risk of PD is significantly higher in patients with depression as compared with healthy individuals.

Plain language summary

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a nervous system disease that predominantly affects neurons of the brain that controls voluntary movement and behavioral processes such as mood, reward, addiction and stress. There is a wide spectrum of problems that can present in patients with PD, however, there are few that can precede the beginning of the illness. Previous studies have evaluated the relation of psychiatric symptoms with PD. However, many aspects need to be studied to understand this relationship. The main emphasis of this systemic review is to establish the association of prodromal depression before the development of PD. Our study showed that there is a strong association between depression and PD and suggests an increased risk of developing PD in formerly depressed patients. Though, it is still unclear if depression is either an early prodromal symptom of PD or a causative risk factor for PD and warrants further studies to determine the causality relationship between the two.

Keywords:

• case–control
• cohort
• depression
• Parkinson’s disease
• prodromal symptoms

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at:www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2217/nmt-2022-0001

Author contributions

SB Beenish Bareeqa and SS Samar searched the data and screened the articles. SS Samar and S Kamal performed data extraction whereas SI Ahmed and SB Beenish Bareeqa conducted analysis on extracted data. Allahyar and Y Masood performed the risk of bias assessment, SB Beenish Bareeqa wrote the first draft with input from SI Ahmed and G Hayat. SB Beenish Bareeqa, S Kamal, SS Samar, Y Masood and G Hayat contributed to the design and final manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.