Patients who had their appendix removed were more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those whose appendix remained in place, according to the largest study to address the relationship between the two conditions.
Patients who had their appendix removed were more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than those whose appendix remained in place, according to the largest study to address the relationship between the two conditions. The retrospective study involving more than 62 million patient records from 26 health systems will be presented at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2019.
“Recent research into the cause of Parkinson’s has centered around alpha synuclein, a protein found in the gastrointestinal tract early in the onset of Parkinson’s,” said Mohammed Z. Sheriff, MD, lead author of the study and a physician at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, Ohio. “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 from Europe 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 U.S. data from an Ohio-based electronic health records company that draws data from 26 major integrated health systems.
Researchers 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.
Read more at Digestive Disease Week
