Having autism may be linked to a future with Parkinson's disease

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-05-28 01:00

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Swedish and US researchers say they have found a link between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a future risk of Parkinson's disease. The researchers looked at data from over 2.2 million people and say that Parkinson's occurred in 0.02% of the people who didn't have ASD, but occurred in 0.05% of the people with ASD. While this kind of research cannot prove that having ASD will directly affect your chances of developing Parkinson's, the researchers say that there might be a potential shared base between neurodevelopmental disorders and Parkinson's disease.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Neurology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Funder: The study was supported by the Simons Foundation (PTE grant 734069 to Dr Sandin), Swedish Research Council (grant 2021-0214 to Drs Yin and Sandin), Karolinska Institutet Research Foundation (grant 2022-02021 to Dr Yin and grant 2020-02156 to Dr Sandin), and the Beatrice and Samuel A. Seaver Foundation (Dr Reichenberg).

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