Key result
Compound obesity linked to ~71% higher Parkinson's risk but paradoxically lower mortality in affected patients.
Why the study?
The effect of obesity on Parkinson's disease remains controversial.
Does compound obesity increase the risk of Parkinson's disease and affect all-cause mortality in adults?
Observational (n=51,394)
Yes
Does compound obesity increase the risk of Parkinson's disease and affect all-cause mortality in adults?
Compound obesity is associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease, but paradoxically correlates with reduced all-cause mortality among those who have the disease.
May heighten PD risk monitoring in compound obesity; leaves open the mortality paradox for causal validation.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative condition, the effect of obesity on PD remains controversial. We aimed to investigate the associations of obesity patterns on PD and all-cause mortality, while developing machine learning (ML)-driven predictive and prognostic models for PD. Fifty-one thousand, three hundred ninety-four adults from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999–2018 were classified into four obesity patterns via body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). Associations of obesity patterns with PD risk and all-cause mortality were evaluated via multivariable logistic and Cox proportional hazards regression across three adjusted models. Subgroup, sensitivity, and restricted cubic spline (RCS) analyses examined stability, robustness, and nonlinearity. An integrative ML-driven architecture identified key features to develop predictive and prognostic nomograms, validated by the area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUCROCs) and calibration curves. Survival differences were analyzed using Kaplan–Meier curves. Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) enhanced model explanation. Compound obesity significantly increased PD risk (Model 1: OR = 1.83, P < 0.001; Model 2: OR = 1.70, P = 0.002; Model 3: OR = 1.71, P = 0.006) yet correlated with reduced all-cause mortality in PD patients (Model 1: HR = 0.43, P = 0.003; Model 2: HR = 0.75, P = 0.428; Model 3: HR = 0.41, P = 0.033). Subgroup analysis revealed only HbA1c-modified association of compound obesity with PD (Pinteraction = 0.031). Sensitivity analyses confirmed robustness (pooled OR = 1.83, P < 0.001; pooled HR = 0.43, P = 0.003). RCS analyses revealed BMI-dependent PD risk escalation (Pnonlinearity = 0.008, BMI < 45.0 kg/m2), inverted U-shaped WC-PD link (Pnonlinearity < 0.001), and inverse dose–response BMI-mortality relationship (Pnonlinearity = 0.003), along with multiphasic WC-mortality association (PThreshold = 0.555 at 95 cm and PThreshold = 0.091 at 118 cm). LASSO + RF identified eight features, achieving moderate performance in PD prediction (SMOTE set: AUCROC = 0.75, Brier = 0.20) and prognosis (train set: AUCROC = 0.72, Brier = 0.22) nomograms, with similar results in the test set (AUCROC = 0.70, Brier = 0.01 for prediction, 0.87 and 0.18 for prognosis). No 24-month survival differences were observed across four obesity patterns (train set: Plog-rank = 0.73; test set: Plog-rank = 0.32). This study preliminarily reveals that compound obesity significantly increases PD risk yet paradoxically associates with reduced all-cause mortality in PD patients. Validated predictive and prognostic nomograms for PD achieve relatively robust performances. Nonetheless, extensive longitudinal studies are required to validate these exploratory findings more comprehensively.
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Fan et al. (2025) conducted an observational in Parkinson's disease (n=51,394). Compound obesity (abnormal BMI and abnormal waist circumference) vs. Normal weight was evaluated on Parkinson's disease risk (fully adjusted model) (OR 1.71, 95% CI 1.17-2.51, p=0.006). Compound obesity significantly increased Parkinson's disease risk (OR 1.71) but paradoxically correlated with reduced all-cause mortality in Parkinson's disease patients (HR 0.41) compared to normal weight.
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