Why Are More Younger Adults in India Developing Parkinson’s Disease?

Back in February of 2026, neurologists attending the 6th International Annual Symposium-2026 in Kerala, organized by the King’s Parkinson’s Research Alliance in India, announced that 40% to 45% of current Indian Parkinson’s patients are developing symptoms between the ages of 22 and 49. The average age of onset for someone being diagnosed with Young-onset Parkinson’s is around the age of 51, compared with the age of roughly 60 in many western studies, though Parkinson’s can certainly show up much earlier than that too. That gap suggests India may be seeing a substantially larger share of people with early-onset Parkinson’s disease, or EOPD, than many North American and European populations do.

What is believed to be driving the increase in Parkinson’s cases is the country’s rapid industrialization and urbanization over the past several decades. Researchers are looking at possible links to air pollution, industrial chemicals, pesticides, and heavy metals. While none of these has been proven to directly cause Parkinson’s disease, they have been linked to a higher risks of the disease in different studies with different population centers across the globe. Most researchers strongly feel that Parkinson’s is likely caused by a combination of environmental exposures, genetics, and aging, and continue to study how these factors may work together.

The question now being asked is: Are there genetic risk factors unique to South Asian populations that have been overlooked because most genetic studies have focused on Europeans? So to answer that question, researchers launched the GAP-India project, short for Genetic Architecture of Parkinson’s Disease in India, to build one of the country’s largest Parkinson’s DNA biobanks. They’re collecting genetic samples and detailed clinical information from patients across India, then using whole-genome sequencing to hunt for genetic risk factors that haven’t been identified before in Indian populations. They’ll compare what they find against European cohort data. The point is to get a fuller picture of Parkinson’s genetics, since what’s been discovered in mostly European populations may not tell the whole story for people of South Asian ancestry.

According to the Global regional and national burden and trends of early-onset Parkinson’s disease from 1990 to 2021 published in June 2026 in npj Parkinson’s Disease, researchers estimate that in 2021, there were approximately 483,900 people worldwide living with early-onset Parkinson’s disease (EOPD), which is defined in the study as the development of Parkinson’s symptoms beginning between the ages of 20 and 49 years old. Researchers estimate that more than 81,000 people developed the condition that year. Over the past three decades, the number of people living with early-onset Parkinson’s has more than doubled, making it an increasingly important area of research being studied. Men accounted for about 60% of new cases, and the highest rates were reported in China, followed by Peru and Bolivia. These findings suggest that early-onset Parkinson’s is becoming more common around the world, although the disease’s impact differs from country to country.

To put that number in perspective, an estimated 11.8 million people worldwide are living with Parkinson’s. That means early-onset cases make up around 4% of the global total, though that share shifts quite a bit depending on the country or population you’re looking at. That’s what makes India stand out. Indian researchers have found that 40% to 45% of their Parkinson’s patients develop symptoms between ages 22 and 49, far above the global average. That doesn’t mean India accounts for 40-45% of the world’s early-onset cases, but it does suggest early-onset disease may be unusually common among Indian patients, which is part of why researchers are digging into the genetic and environmental factors that might be unique to South Asian populations.