High exposure to highly stressful events may be associated with the development of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), according to a recent study. Furthermore, researchers found that cases have more than a 3 times greater odds of high exposure to high-severity events than controls prior to the clinical development of PSP. 76 patients diagnosed with PSP and 68 age-matched unrelated controls were administered a life stressor questionnaire. Stress was quantified as total number of events, number of life changing events, and number of events characterized by self-rated severity. Conditional odds ratio (OR) was calculated for each measure, with participants in the highest quartile of each measure being defined as high-exposure in relation to all other participants. Researchers found:

• There were no significant differences between the reported number of total events or life-changing events in cases and controls.
• However, 24.4% of cases (n=11) and 9.1% of controls (n=5) had a higher exposure to high severity events, yielding an OR of 3.2.