I live in a semi-detached house. My sister and brother-in-law live in the house attached to my mine.I was diagnosed with idiopathic PD 18 months ago, after living here for 16 and a half years. My brother-in-law has just been diagnosed with idiopathic PD after living here 16 and a half years. (They moved in 18 months after us).
I think that 1 in 500 of the population will be diagnosed with PD, therefore the chance of the two of us living in the same house getting PD is one in 250,000. (My maths leaves a lot to be desired so I might have calculated that wrongly. Please correct me if that is the case) Especially strange is the fact that it has occurred at exactly the same length of time that we have been living here. We are obviously not blood relations either.
Perhaps something in the environment is a trigger?

See if the owners have sprayed for termites or other bugs or if neighbors have noticed environmental toxins in that area....chemicals can induce symptoms. Water sealer brought on a new influx of them to me a couple of years back.....and had no effect on the people who were painting it on in the floor below (garage) at a friends home.
Carpet cleaning at the same house (using ??chemicals )at a different time, also affected me badly.

i would suspect toxins too but wanted to ask if either of you have others in your family with pd? I would also send in s spit sample to 23andme.com. They will test for some of the known pd genes. The instructions are at the site. Let us know what connections you might find. It's f ree if you have been diagnosed.

www.23andMe.com

I think there is map , world wide?, showing where PD is most dx'd....some areas have PD dx'd more than others..

Does anyone have it handy? or know where to find it online?

Here's one but doesn't look like the one I'm thinking of -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:P..._-_WHO2004.svg

ladybird,

Thanks very much for sharing your experience.

I don't have good prevalence statistics for Scotland, so we'll run with yours: 1 in 500 - a prevalence of 200/100,000.

I would analyse your situation as follows. You wouldn't be writing to us unless you or your partner had PD so the probability of you or your partner having PD is 1, not 0.002. You would probably have posted if any near neighbour had PD, perhaps a total of 5, two to the left, your partner and two to the right. This gives a probability of approximately 5 in 500. This leaves us with a final probability of about 1 in 100. (This is called an a posteriori analysis.)

Even with this much higher probability you still have an interesting statistic.

I think there's a good chance that even after PD has been triggered a person's environment can affect their rate of progression.

Do you have any mold or fungal, wet or dry rot, problems with your houses?

I recommend that you see your GP about this.

John

You have both moved house around the same time. Did you decorate the houses before moving, or immediately afterwards. Especially did you use stuff like gloss paint, undercoat, floor sealants, etc - the smelly things, with solvents.

Did the gardens require a lot of work, i.e. did you use weedkillers, defoliant type ? Scotland? Did you spray for midges?

Agree with Aunt Bean on carpets, new carpets/carpets cleaned with solvent type cleaners....

In the time you have been there did you get a virus type illness around the same time? Even something fairly low level, cold, flu etc.

Does anyone else you know in the area have PD? Maybe your GP might have noticed if he/she has unusual amount of patients. Most doctors only have a scant handful.

Were there any unusual environmental events in your area?

Do you have a source of high output electricity adjacent to your homes?

Thanks for all your responses.
Aunt Bean, we sprayed for woodworm, but only before we moved in as I have always been neurotic about avoiding chemicals. Next door didn't spray when they moved in, and their house, although attached, is completely separated by very thick walls.
Paula, Nobody in either my family or my brother-in-law's family have PD. Also, I will send a saliva sample. I didn't know about that. Thank you.
Jo Mar, I would like to see that map too!
johnt, We have no problems with mould etc. I really don't know if anyone in the neighbourhood has PD. We are a small rural community of about 40 dwellings surrounded by woods on three sides and pasture on the fourth. I have never seen them spraying anything here, only a mile or two away. I am a bit thick about maths and statistics but my statement about the 1 in 250,000 has elicited a very varied response on the UK PD site. Most seem to think the chances are quite remote. I am really still confused on that one! I didn't quite follow your reasoning, but that's not saying you're wrong!
Lindy, We decorated before moving in and I've always avoided chemicals, even before knowing about PD. I always ate organically grown food too. My brother-in-law decorated after they moved in and has never been very careful with diet. We have no source of output in electricity nearby (pylons about a mile away) and I never use weedkiller, nor has my sister as far as I am aware.
There are no unusual environmental events that I am aware of. All good questions though! I will keep you all posted.

A few other things to consider:

Are there any local starling roosts?

Do you have any bats in the roof?

See the thread "Histoplasma capsulatum" that shows the epidemiological evidence that suggests a link between this fungus and PD. The faeces of bats and starlings allows the fungus to grow.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread170268.html

Is there a history of Lyme Disease in the area?

It may be that the house is not important, but other common ground is, e.g. your parent's house.

John

Johnt,
The answers are 'no' to all those questions except one. We have a very high prevalence of Lyme Disease here. My son has had it twice, and still suffers from effects of it. We have deer come into the garden and we all get ticks from time to time. I know all the signs to watch for, and my son was so ill that I know the rest of us can't have been affected by a disease bearing tick. We have all been so healthy.(Apart from my recent diagnosis of course).
I don't really have knowledge of the connection of Lyme disease and PD. I would be grateful if you could give me some info.
Kind regards, Ladybird.

There is a huge amount on the web claiming:
- Lyme Disease can be misdiagnosed as Parkinson's
- Lyme Disease can cause Parkinson's

Much of this is anecdotal, e.g. MJF had Lyme before being diagnosed with PD.

But I can't find any academic papers to definitively support this.

(My own quick look at the geographical epidemiology of Lyme and Parkinson's showed, in effect, no correlation between the two, see:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...highlight=lyme
This thread gives a link to an excellent article by Pamela Weintruab.)

See also the thread from 2007/2008.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...highlight=lyme
This gives some very interesting personal accounts of Lyme/Parkinson's.

See the excellent BADA-UK site:
http://www.bada-uk.org/homesection/a...outbada-uk.php

Regarding being well before diagnosis with PD, as I understand it, Lyme can be asymptomatic.

I think it is worth discussing with your GP.

Talking generally now, my view, for what it's worth, is that on being diagnosed with PD, more efforts should be made to find the underlying cause, rather than immediately being put in the "you've got this for life, but we can help with the symptoms" category. I suspect that a few new PWP could have their Parkinson's reversed and many more could have their rate of progression reduced if, where appropriate, antibiotics or antifungals were given immediately. See the current thread started by Conductor71.

John