One of the diseases that has been identified to affect individual’s motor abilities is Parkinson’s disease (PD). In their research, Wu et al. (2018) explained that roughly 7.5 million individuals suffer from the said disease globally. The disease is a neurodegenerative disorder whereby patients experience symptoms such as tremor, muscular rigidity and postural instability. Wu et al. (2018) further noted that the motor complications alongside other symptoms tend to undermine an individual’s quality of life as they lead to severe disabilities. Nevertheless, the authors explained that there has not been any clear prevention strategy against the disease which provides rationale for their study.
Wu et al. (2018) engaged in a retrospective cohort study whereby they followed respondents individually over a five-year period. Their aim was to identify those individuals who had been diagnosed with PD. The study design involved the use of Cox proportional hazard regression analysis whose function was to evaluate the hazard rates (HRs) for PD between the study participants and the comparison cohorts. The motivating factor the study in question was that no research exists which assesses the therapeutic benefits of pioglitazone in patients with PD. In this regard, the cohort study sought to demonstrate whether a positive relationship existed between pioglitazone use and PD in terms of reducing HRs. As mentioned, the retrospective approach entailed a study cohort and a comparison cohort. Thus, it is justified to state that the study involved a treatment and control group.
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The findings demonstrated that, among the sampled respondents, PD occurred in 1.63% (257), 1.51% (119) pioglitazone users and about 1.75%(138) non-users. Within the follow-up period, the adjusted HRs for PD stood at 0.90 (95% confidence interval) in patients who received pioglitazone compared to those who had not been treated with the drug in question. However, the results were acquired after adjusting for geographical region, monthly income, depressive disorder, head injury, urbanization level, aspirin use, among other factors. While that is the case, those diagnosed with PD over a five-year period had been diagnosed with diabetes (Wu et al., 2018). Understandably, the rationale to use pioglitazone was based on the fact that experimental studies have positively appraised the therapeutic approach. They noted that using pioglitazone helps suppress proinflammatory cytokine production alongside other neuroprotective effects which makes it a potentially effective therapeutic strategy for patients suffering from PD (Wu et al., 2018).
One of the notable aspects of the study was that some of the patients in the cohort had diabetes. The implication is that comorbidity influences how a drug or therapy functions or ought to function. That probably explains why Wu et al. (2018) noted that the retrospective cohort study was unable to determine the link between the incidences of PD and pioglitazone use. They considered that the said therapeutic strategy might not an effective agent to reduce the incidences of PD. Further, the results of the current study were inconsistent with previous research whereby scholars had confirmed the positive effect of pioglitazone in reducing the risk for PD. However, Wu et al. (2018) explained that the contradiction in the findings could be due to study strategy variations, information deficiency, variance in ethnicity among other factors.
Conclusion
The study in question used a retrospective cohort approach focusing on the potential positive effects or lack thereof of pioglitazone on PD incidence. However, the findings demonstrated that the therapeutic strategy was not as effective despite previous studies confirming its efficacy in lowering the risk for PD. The authors noted various factors such as ethnicity variation, and information deficiency to explain the contradiction in the findings.
Reference
Wu, H., Kao, L., Shih, J., Kao, H., Chou, Y., Li, I., & Kao, S. (2018). Pioglitazone use and Parkinson’s disease: A retrospective cohort study in Taiwan. BMJ Open,8 (8). doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2018-023302
