Bianca Done
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Jonathan Reader
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center / Medicine
Program:
Authors: Bianca Done, Jonathan Reader
Session: Session 1: 9:00 am – 9:50 am
Poster: 76
Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that can affect quality of life. One way to understand potential treatments is to look at conditions associated with PD and their causes, such as REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and major depressive disorder (MDD). Additionally, hypertension is common among people with PD, RBD, and MDD and is easily controlled with medication. In order to examine the relationship between hypertension, PD, RBD, and MDD, this study aims to create a profile of antihypertensive medication use in participants with PD, RBD, and MDD from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC). Participants would visit a local Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center approximately yearly to complete a series of assessments. Participants were included in the current study who had PD, RBD, MDD, or any combination of these conditions. Participants available for analyses (n = 1734) included 56.9% females, a mean age of 69.2 years (SD = 13.7), and a mean education of 16.5 years (SD = 8.4). The majority of participants (54.9%) were white. RBD was determined by a clinician diagnosis. PD and MDD were both self-reported and determined by a clinician diagnosis. Participants self-reported demographic information and provided a medication log with the medications they were using up to two weeks prior to their visit. Participants were grouped according to their comorbid conditions: PD only, RBD only, MDD only, PD and RBD, PD and MD, RBD and MDD, and PD, RBD, and MDD. The categories of treatment were antihypertensive combination therapy, angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, antiadrenergic agents, beta-adrenergic blocking agents (beta-blockers), calcium channel blocking agents, diuretics, vasodilators, and angiotensin II inhibitors. A 7-sample test for equality of proportions without continuity correction was performed in R (Version 4.3.1) to determine if there was a significant difference in the proportion of participants in each diagnostic grouping who took the various classes of medication. A Bonferoni correction was applied, and if the 7-sample test was significant at the p < 0.001 threshold, post hoc tests between groups were conducted to determine where the omnibus test difference was found. A statistically significant difference of p < 0.001 was only found for antiadrenergic agents (Table 1). The highest proportion of participants taking antiadrenergic agents were those with both PD and MDD, possibly because some of the receptors involved in both PD and MDD, such as P2Y receptors, are also involved in developing hypertension (Sunggip et al., 2017). Strengths of the current study included the wide variety of antihypertensive or blood pressure medications in the dataset. However, some of the groups were small (n < 15) and were further reduced when considering diagnostic categories. Creating a profile of medication use could be helpful for understanding what medications are most popular for people with PD based on their comorbidities and how to optimize treatment. Further study is required to understand the connection between PD, MDD, and hypertension.
