The long term goal of this research is to elucidate the cause(s) of Parkinson's disease, with a focus on environmental determinants. We propose to investigate the relationship between Parkinson's disease and exposure to pesticides and other factors by conducting a nested case-control study in the Agricultural Health Study.
The Agricultural Health Study is a cohort study of 52,000 licensed pesticide applicators and 32,000 of their spouses, conducted in North Carolina and Iowa. It is a joint effort of the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
The studies proposed here take full advantage of the Agricultural Health Study. We believe that this work could provide a critical and dramatic next step in furthering our knowledge of environmental determinants of PD, and thereby take us closer to our goal of finding its cause(s)
