Investigation of the association of military employment and Parkinson's disease with a validated Parkinson's disease case-finding strategy.
Melinda C Power, Varsha Parthasarathy, Kan Z Gianattasio and 6 others
PMID 36524738WHAT IT FOUND
Working for the military was not associated with a higher risk of Parkinson's disease in this large cohort of older adults.
The study also validated that combining patient self-reports with prescription records accurately identifies Parkinson's cases in research settings.
Key findings
01There was no significant association between military employment and either prevalent or incident Parkinson's disease in fully adjusted models.
02A case-finding strategy combining self-reported diagnosis and prescription records showed high specificity and accuracy for identifying Parkinson's disease compared to medical record review.
03While overall risk was null, a non-significant trend toward increased Parkinson's risk was observed among never-smokers with military employment, though based on few cases.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study had limited power to detect small effects because few participants had both military employment and Parkinson's disease. Information on the specifics of military service, such as combat exposure or chemical exposure, was not available. The sample was drawn from a private insurer population, which may not represent veterans who receive care exclusively through the Department of Veterans Affairs or Tricare. The validation subset for the case-finding method was not randomly selected and included older, sicker individuals than the main analytical sample.
Declared interests
The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the non-significant trend in never-smokers as evidence that military service increases Parkinson's risk. This finding was based on a very small number of cases and did not reach statistical significance, while the primary analysis showed no overall association.