To the Editor,

It was with great interest that we read Rodríguez-Violante et al’s. article on the last issue of Rev Mex Neuroci, regarding the incidence rates of Parkinson’s disease (PD) in Mexico in the 2014-2017 period¹; the authors report an increase of 26.7% in the average annual percent change from 2014 to 2017. We believe this to be an extremely valuable contribution, being the first nation-wide study on the subject; notwithstanding the limitations, the authors draw our attention to an ever-growing menace: the burden of PD.

PD is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, only second in frequency to Alzheimer’s disease. In 2017, the Global Burden of Neurological Disease reported that PD was the only one with increasing rates of prevalence, disability and death². Last year, the Global Burden of PD study published in The Lancet Neurology³ reported that worldwide 6.1 million individuals were living with PD, a dramatic increase from the 2.5 million in 1990; emphasizing PD as the fastest-growing neurodegenerative disorder and the need for further epidemiological and clinical studies.

As the number is projected to dramatically increase up to even 17 million worldwide in 2040⁴, some authors have advocated taking action on the oncoming PD pandemic⁵. This call of action requires an interdisciplinary and multicenter collaboration between clinicians and other allied healthcare professionals across the country. May this article serve as our own national call for collaboration on the PD pandemic. As Professor Baastian Bloem from the Netherlands declared on the 5^th World Parkinson Congress (June 4-7, Kyoto, Japan): “Collaboration is the new competition. Don’t do it alone.”