Risk factor studies of age-at-onset in a sample ascertained for Parkinson disease affected sibling pairs: a cautionary tale

Risk factor studies of age-at-onset in a sample ascertained for Parkinson disease affected sibling pairs: a cautionary tale

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Abstract An association between exposure to a risk factor and age-at-onset of disease may reflect an effect on the rate of disease occurrence or an acceleration of the disease process.The difference in age-at-onset arising from case-only studies, however, may also reflect secular trends in the princess polly dresses long sleeve prevalence of exposure to the risk factor.Comparisons of age-at-onset associated with risk factors are commonly performed in case series enrolled for genetic linkage analysis of late onset diseases.We describe how the results of age-at-onset studies of environmental risk factors reflect the underlying structure of the source population, rather than an association with age-at-onset, by contrasting the effects of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking on Parkinson disease age-at-onset with the effects on age-at-enrollment in a population based study sample.

Despite earlier evidence to suggest a protective association of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking with Parkinson disease risk, the age-at-onset results are comparable to the patterns observed in the population sample, and thus a causal inference from the age-at-onset effect may not be justified.Protective effects of multivitamin use on PD age-at-onset are also shown to be subject to a bias from the relationship between age and ventilationstejp multivitamin initiation.Case-only studies of age-at-onset must be performed with an appreciation for the association between risk factors and age and ageing in the source population.