Personality, stress and risk of Parkinson's disease
The focus of Johanna Sieurin's thesis was to investigate the relationship of personality and stress with subsequent risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Johanna's thesis includes four studies. Study I is a population-based cohort study using questionnaire data from the Swedish Twin Registry to explore if the personality traits neuroticism and introversion were associated with later risk of Parkinson's disease. In Study II, Johanna wanted to further explore the main findings from study I, with the aim to examine whether the observed associations between neuroticism, smoking and PD may be causal. Study III explores the association between occupational stress and risk of PD. This was a population-based cohort study including individuals born in Sweden between 1920 and 1950. And finally, Study IV is a population- and sibling-matched cohort study to investigate the association between stress-related disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.
We found that stress-related disorders were associated with increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases in general. The association was stronger for vascular neurodegenerative diseases, which might indicate importance of a cerebrovascular pathway.
On May 29, Johanna will defend her thesis “Personality, stress and risk of Parkinson's disease". Her opponent is Dr Rodolfo Savica from the Department of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA. Johanna's supervisors are Karin Wirdefeldt, Nancy Pedersen and Yiqiang Zhan.
Time: 14:00
Location: Lecture hall Atrium, Nobels väg 12B, Karolinska Institutet, Solna
Join by Zoom: https://ki-se.zoom.us/j/62945791569?pwd=WDMzMVAyNXUxWEVENGVHYm1FaEMyUT09
Read the thesis in KI's open archive.