Researchers in Denmark found that heart attack survivors have a 20% less chance of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Researchers then compared the cohort to more than 909,000 participants, who served as a control group.An 84-year-old former pilot who has Parkinson’s disease found herself in a familiar place: in the cockpit of a plane thanks to a fellow aviator.
"We have previously found that following a heart attack, the risk of neurovascular complications such as ischemic stroke [clot-caused stroke] or vascular dementia is markedly increased, so the finding of a lower risk of Parkinson's disease was somewhat surprising," said lead study author Jens Sundbøll.
"In general, more heart attack patients smoke and have elevated cholesterol, either of which may explain the slightly reduced risk of Parkinson's disease among heart attack survivors," the study's authors noted.