OBJECTIVES

: To assess the risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD) for two adrenergic drugs, salbutamol and propranolol in real-world settings.

METHODS

: Electronic medical records (EMR) of PD (ICD-10 G20 or G21) patients age ≥19 years receiving their first β2 (beta2) adrenergic receptor agonist or antagonist (salbutamol or propranolol) were evaluated using TriNetX Analytics Spotlight, a federated global health research network of ~36M patient lives. Both cohorts had at least one year of medical history for evaluation, never received the comparator drug, and had no PD prior to the 10-year outcome window. The risk of PD from first exposure to either drug was analyzed using measures of association and a survival analysis was conducted via Kaplan-Meier estimator.

RESULTS

: CONCLUSIONS

: Patients taking β2 antagonist drug propranolol have significantly higher risk of PD than patients exposed to β2 agonist drug salbutamol. The findings in our real-world data analysis confirm the results of the recently published study conducted by Mittal et al which unveil the reduced risk of PD among those exposed to a β2 agonist and increased PD risk correlated to patients taking β2 antagonists. As β2-adrenoreceptor is linked to transcription of α-synuclein (SNCA) and risk of PD in a ligand-specific fashion, it establishes a potential new target for PD therapies.