About 60,000 people are affected by Parkinson's disease each year, and despite medications, few options exist to treat the neurological disease's onset. However, researchers found patients have about a 20 percent lower chance of developing Parkinson's if they have their appendix removed, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine.
Here are four things to know:
1. For the study, researchers examined data from two complementary epidemiological databases. The first dataset included information on 1.6 million Swedes who underwent appendectomies as far back as 1964. Researchers also analyzed data on 896 Parkinson's patients from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative database.
2. Using the first database, researchers found people who have their appendix removed have a 19.3 percent lower risk of developing Parkinson's. Among these patients, Parkinson's disease incidence was 1.6 per 10,000 people over a ten-year span, compared to 1.98 for the general population.
3. Additionally, appendectomies only reduced Parkinson's risk in people living in rural areas who underwent the procedure early in life. Individuals living in urban areas or those with disease-causing mutations did not demonstrate a lower Parkinson's risk.
"It's a really nice study, and all of their ideas are biologically plausible," James Beck, PhD, chief scientific officer of the Parkinson’s Foundation, told STAT. "It connects the epidemiology, about appendectomy reducing the risk of Parkinson's, with the basic science."
4. The findings do not suggest that everyone with Parkinson's or a high probability of inheriting the disease should schedule an appendectomy, according to Viviane Labrie, PhD, a genetic researcher at Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Van Andel Research Institute. Dr. Labrie told STAT the appendix may be one site of origin for the disease, "but it likely has many sites of origin, including the brain."
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