Chronic Use of β-Blockers and the Risk of Parkinson's Disease

[Glenn]

I didn't see a specific thread for beta blockers so I am creating this one.

I found this study while researching any linkage between beta blockers and Parkinson's disease.

Maybe someone with knowledge of the statistics used in these studies can tell me what the bolded part in the results below means in real life and common language.

Chronic Use of β-Blockers and the Risk of Parkinson's Disease​

Chronic Use of β-Blockers and the Risk of Parkinson's Disease - PubMed

Chronic use of β-blockers confers a time- and dose-dependent increased risk for Parkinson's disease. In view of the available alternatives for β-blockers, their chronic use should be carefully reconsidered.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Which has the results and conclusion:

Results: Overall, 145,098 patients received β-blockers, and 1,187,151 patients did not. The adjusted hazard ratio for Parkinson's disease among β-blocker users was 1.51 (95% confidence interval 1.28-1.77; p < 0.0001).

Conclusions: Chronic use of β-blockers confers a time- and dose-dependent increased risk for Parkinson's disease. In view of the available alternatives for β-blockers, their chronic use should be carefully reconsidered.

 

[nicklebleu]

It basically means that when you are on betablockers you increase your risk for developing Parkinson’s by about 50% (or in other words you are 1.5 times as likely to). And the result is statistically significant.