An appendectomy increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study.
Parkinson’s disease. Image credit: Blausen Gallery 2014 / Wikiversity Journal of Medicine, doi: 10.15347/wjm/2014.010.
“Recent research into the cause of Parkinson’s disease has centered around alpha synuclein, a protein found in the gastrointestinal tract early in the onset of Parkinson’s,” said study lead author Dr. Mohammed Sheriff, a physician at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.
“This is why scientists around the world have been looking into the gastrointestinal tract, including the appendix, for evidence about the development of Parkinson’s.”
Previous findings on appendectomies and Parkinson’s have been inconsistent, with some studies showing no relationship and a recent study by European scientists showing patients who still had their appendix were more likely to develop Parkinson’s.
This contradiction prompted Dr. Sheriff and colleagues to seek answers to the question using data from an Ohio-based electronic health records company that draws data from 26 major integrated health systems.
The authors analyzed electronic health records representing more than 62.2 million patients and identified those who had appendectomies and were diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at least six months later.
They found that among 488,190 patients who had undergone appendectomies, 4,470 (0.92%) went on to develop Parkinson’s.
Of the remaining 61.7 million patients without appendectomies, they identified only 177,230 (0.29%) who developed the disease.
According to the team, patients who had an appendectomy were more than three times as likely to develop Parkinson’s than those who had not.
“Our research shows a clear relationship between the appendix, or appendix removal, and Parkinson’s disease, but it is only an association,” Dr. Sheriff noted.
“Additional research is needed to confirm this connection and to better understand the mechanisms involved.”
The researchers will present their results May 20 at the Digestive Disease Week 2019 (DDW 2019) in San Diego, CA.
_____
Mohammed Z. Sheriff et al. Parkinson’s disease is more prevalent in patients with appendectomies: a national population-based study. DDW 2019, abstract #739
