Cerebral small vessel disease severity and progression could indicate future parkinsonism risk

In a study of 503 patients with cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) from the RUN-DMC prospective cohort who did not have parkinsonism at baseline, 10.2% developed incident parkinsonism during 14 years of follow-up.
A number of baseline factors were associated with subsequent parkinsonism risk, including the presence of lacunes (hazard ratio [HR]=1.84), peak width of skeletonized mean diffusivity (HR=1.66 per standard deviation [SD] increase), and higher baseline white matter hyperintensities (HR=1.46 per SD increase).
The authors conclude that these findings suggest a role of SVD in parkinsonism development, and that further research is required to investigate the underlying mechanisms.