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To the Editor:
We read the article by Savica et al.1 with interest. The authors explore a possible association between preceding anemia and Parkinson disease (PD). There are 2 issues that we would like to bring to the authors' attention.
First, the strength of this association seemed to increase with time between occurrence of anemia and onset of PD. However, there were no data on current hemoglobin levels in their patients with PD. All of the hypothetical mechanisms discussed to explain this association including systemic onset of PD process; iron, folate, or other deficiency; or shared genetic variants or early life risk factors would also be compatible with anemia persisting after PD onset.
We analyzed complete blood counts from a large and well-characterized prevalence sample of patients with PD and controls (n = 209). In 83 idiopathic PD (IPD) and 91 control participants comparable for age and gender distribution, we did not observe any difference in hemoglobin levels (IPD 14.1 ± 1.4 g/dL vs controls 14.3 ± 1.2 g/dL) or in blood count or erythrocyte volume. These findings remained stable in gender-stratified analyses and the expected gender difference in hemoglobin levels was confirmed.
In addition, we followed the authors' hypothesis regarding genetic variants or early life risk factors contributing to both anemia and PD. We speculated that known PD genes might …
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