HAVE YOUR SAY.
Join us in The Bullpen, where the members of the Scientific Inquirer community get to shape the site’s editorial decision making. We’ll be discussing people and companies to profile on the site. On Wednesday, September 28 at 5:30pm EST, join us on Discord and let’s build the best Scientific Inquirer possible.
Infections treated with specialty hospital care in early- and mid-life are associated with an increased subsequent risk of Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson’s diseases (PD), but not amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a new study publishing September 15th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Jiangwei Sun of Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and colleagues.
Infections treated with specialty hospital care in early- and mid-life are associated with an increased subsequent risk of Alzheimer’s (AD) and Parkinson’s diseases (PD), but not amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a new study publishing September 15th in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Jiangwei Sun of Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and colleagues.
A hospital-treated infection 5 or more years before diagnosis was associated with a 16% higher risk of AD (95%CI: 1.15-1.18, P < 0.001) and a 4% higher risk of PD (95%CI: 1.02-1.06, P < 0.001), with similar risks seen for bacterial, viral and other infections and for different sites of infection. The highest risk of disease was seen in people with multiple hospital-treated infections before the age of 40, with more than double the risk of AD (OR=2.62, 95%CI: 2.52-2.72, P < 0.001) and more than 40% increase in the risk of PD (OR=1.41, 95%CI: 1.29-1.53, 3 44 P < 0.001). No association was observed for ALS, regardless of age at diagnosis.
“These findings suggest that infectious events may be a trigger or amplifier of a pre-existing disease process, leading to clinical onset of neurodegenerative disease at a relatively early age,” the authors say, while also pointing out that “due to the observational nature of the study, these results do not formally prove a causal link.”
Sun adds, “Hospital-treated infections, especially in early- and mid-life, were associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD), primarily among AD and PD cases diagnosed before 60 years.”
IMAGE CREDIT: Jiangwei Sun (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Leave a Reply