Could treatment of autonomic dysfunction in early and prodromal Parkinson’s disease slow disease progression?

A recently published study by Ma et al. (Ma J, Dou K, Liu R, Liao Y, Yuan Z, Xie A. Front Aging Neurosci 14: 898149, 2022) investigated the 5-year longitudinal association between sleep disorders and depression in early and prodromal Parkinson's disease (PD). Not surprisingly, sleep disorders were associated with higher depression scores among patients with PD but, interestingly, autonomic dysfunction was revealed as a mediator between the two. This mini-review highlights these findings with an emphasis on the proposed benefit of autonomic dysfunction regulation and early intervention in prodromal PD.