- The Utah Department of Health is looking into reports of a cluster of Parkinson’s disease cases in West Valley City.
- The department is pulling together a team and gathering data to confirm if the rate is abnormally high, and if so look for a cause.
- Utah has the highest death rate from Parkinson’s disease in the country, and a disease registry could help find the cause.
WEST VALLEY CITY — The Utah Department of Health and Human Services is looking into a tip that a neighborhood in West Valley City may have an unusually high number of Parkinson’s disease diagnoses.
Sydnee Christiansen, an epidemiologist for the healthy aging program in the department, said that over the last month since the tip came in, they have been assembling a team to review the data.
The department is not yet ready to confirm that the number of cases is unusually high or that, if it is, the prevalence is not due to the neighborhood having a higher number of people with risk factors — like being white, elderly, veterans exposed to Agent Orange, or people with careers that led to large amounts of chemical exposure…