Early, Midlife Hospital-treated Infections may Increase risk of Parkinson's disease

Key highlights of the study:

• A hospital-treated infection that occurred five years or more before the diagnosis of a neurological disease was connected to a 4% increased chance of acquiring Parkinson's. No matter if the infection was bacterial, viral, or another kind, the danger persisted. Additionally, the risk for infections in the gastrointestinal and genitourinary systems of the body was the same.
• The chance of acquiring Parkinson's disease was more than 40% higher in people who had repeated infections that required hospital care before the age of 40.
• Alzheimer's disease risk was also shown to be higher. In patients with one hospital-treated infection five years or more before the disease diagnosis, it was 16% higher, and in patients with several infections prior to the age of 40, it was more than twice as high. For ALS, no connection was found.

The research findings, that hospital-treated infections were more strongly associated with risk of AD and PD before 60 years of age, as compared to later, and that people who experienced repeated infections in their early and mid-life had the highest risk increment of AD and PD, according to the researchers, are novel and potentially significant.

The researchers concluded that the underlying processes for the association between infections and neurodegenerative illness may not be specific to certain pathogens or damaged organs but rather could take place at the systemic level.

According to them, infectious episodes may act as a catalyst or amplifying factor for an underlying disease process, causing neurodegenerative illness to manifest clinically at a young age in people who are predisposed to the condition.

REFERENCE

Sun J, Ludvigsson JF, Ingre C, Piehl F, Wirdefeldt K, Zagai U, Ye W, Fang F. Hospital-treated infections in early- and mid-life and risk of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: A nationwide nested case-control study in Sweden. PLoS Med. 2022 Sep 15;19(9):e1004092. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1004092. PMID: 36107840; PMCID: PMC9477309.