Smoking and Coffee Drinking Linked to Lower Parkinson’s Risk

Researchers at the Miami Institute for Human Genomics at the Miller School found that smoking and caffeine may influence dopamine levels in the brain, but they are not a simple preventative. "There are over 4,000 components in cigarette smoke, and we assume it might be nicotine that is impacting the disease, but it might be other things," Scott says, noting that the nicotine anti-smoking patch does not significantly improve symptoms in Parkinson's patients. "If we could find out whether it was truly caffeine or nicotine and how it acts on the brain, that might help us develop better treatments for Parkinson's patients." The message is that this research does NOT support starting to smoke tobacco to avoid Parkinson's disease.