Environmental Aspects of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases Neuropathologies: A Focus on Heavy Metals and Pesticides

Parkinson And Alzheimer Diseases As Neurodegenerative Disorders: Etiology And History

Health care improvements have contributed to people living longer leading to an increasing life expectancy in the last decades. However, the cases of AD and PD increased as well. Parkinson’s diseases are among the most common neurodegenerative disorder after AD, and overall incidence rates for all age groups have been reported to range from 1.5 to 22 per 100,000 person-years. Other reports estimate the prevalence range of PD from 167 to 5703 per 100,000 with preference in men (Wirdefeldt, Adami, Cole, Trichopoulos, & Mandel, 2011)and these diseases are increasingly raising big international concerns in last decades due to their high incidence. Etiology of AD and PD still little understood and genetic and environmental factors may contribute to the onset and/or development of these illnesses, which highlights the need to broaden the research scope by identifying the environmental risk factors that predispose to the development of AD and PD. It is known that the etiology of neurodegenerative diseases is multifactorial, and there is evidence that external factors like lifestyle and chemical exposures are linked with the risks of onset of these diseases (Campdelacreu, 2014).The vast majority of AD and PD cases are observed among elderly persons. As the exposure to risk factors occur many years before the diagnosis, the assessment of these chronic exposures are difficult to perform in retrospective studies to associate them with the onset/development of AD and PD.