A team of researchers claimed to have discovered a link between Parkinson's disease and drinking milk.
According to their study, milk contains contaminants from a banned pesticide that could lead to this degenerative disorder, UPI reported.
For the study, the researchers turned to post mortem examinations from 1992 to 2004 on brains donated by men from Hawaii. Based on the data, they discovered that those who drank the most amount of milk also had the lowest neuron density, which is one of the major effects of Parkinson's disease.
They then noted that the milk drank by the men may have contained traces of the pesticide heptachlor epoxide. This was commonly used from the 1960s to the 1980s by farmers in the U.S. to prevent termites from destroying their pineapple crops. However, in 1988, the U.S. Environmental Protection agency issued a ban on the pesticide.
Years after the ban was implemented by the government agency, the chemicals from the pesticide could have still remained in the soil and water of most farms. Cows and goats that grazed these areas may have accidentally consumed these chemicals which could contaminate the milk that they produce.
But, despite the correlation, the researchers admitted that they were not able to test the milk which they believe contained traces of the pesticide.
"We don't have all the data yet, but we are close to finding the smoking gun here," lead researcher Robert Abbott of Japan's Shiga University of Medical Science said according to Time. "It's not complete, but it's very suspicious.
Due to the lack of strong evidence, the Parkinson's Disease Foundation noted that the results of the study should not be regarded as final. Further testing should be conducted in order to validate the claims made by the researchers.
"Although it is plausible that pesticide contamination in milk contributed to brain cell loss in the study participants, many factors remain unknown," the organization said in a statement. "For example, the researchers could not test whether the milk the men drank was contaminated with pesticide and no one knows how long or how widespread the contamination was before being detected."
Hopefully, a follow-up study will be carried out by Abbott's team to clearly identify if there is a solid connection between milk contaminants and the increased risk of getting Parkinson's disease.
The findings of the researchers were detailed in a report published on December 9 in the medical journal Neurology.
