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The discovery comes after an analysis that examined how appendicular ablation surgery (appendectomy) affected the risk of Parkinson's in 1.6 million Swedish residents.
The study could not prove causality, but revealed that an appendectomy reduced the risk of Parkinson's disease by about 20%.
"This is a tissue that most people consider a useless organ, which is attached to the large intestine and is eliminated as a very common surgical practice," said Viviane Labrie, author of the study, neuroscientist at the Center for Disease Control. neurodegenerative sciences of the Institute. Van Andel Research, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The new findings suggest that "the appendix could be a tissue that plays a role in the onset of Parkinson's disease," he said.
Because? "The typical pathology of Parkinson's disease in the brain is made up of Lewy bodies, which are characterized by an agglomerated form of a protein called alpha-synuclein," Labrie said in statements collected by the journalist Alan Mozes and published by HealthDay. New ..
In addition, agglomerations of this protein are found in the intestinal tract and are "present in everyone's appendages," sometimes years before the onset of Parkinson's symptoms, he said.
Then, "we think that if in rare events [esas aglomeraciones de proteína] they would escape from the appendix and reach the brain, which could lead to Parkinson's disease. "How?" Just moving along the nerve that connects the intestinal tract directly to the brain, said Labrie.
Parkinson's disease attacks the nervous system and causes progressive loss of motor functions and many non-motor functions.
One of the common complications of Parkinson's disease is the appearance of gastrointestinal dysfunction (which includes constipation), which may actually precede the loss of mobility in 20 years. This highlighted a potential link between the onset of Parkinson's disease and the appendix, the researchers explained.
To find out, the researchers looked at data collected by the Swedish National Register of Patients. This register is unique because, since 1964, it keeps a complete history of the diagnoses and surgeries of a large part of the Swedish patients.
Of the 1.6 million patients covered, more than 550,000 had an appendectomy.
After tracking the incidence of Parkinson's disease up to 52 years after surgery, researchers found that Parkinson's disease was diagnosed at 1.2 per 1,000 patients with appendectomy, compared with a risk of 1.4 per 1,000 people in the Swedish general population.
This meant that the risk of Parkinson's was reduced by 19.3% among those whose appendages had been removed.
In addition, after focusing on the specific experiences of some 850 patients with Parkinson's disease, the researchers determined that excision of the appendix was also associated with a delay of 3, 6 years in the onset of Parkinson's disease among those who had undergone surgery, but they developed the disease.
But Labrie pointed out that "we do not say that having an appendix causes Parkinson's disease, nor that everyone should have his appendix removed".
Instead, "we think that what truly distinguishes a person who develops Parkinson's from a person who does not, is not the presence of this pathology, but the factors that cause the output of the annex ". This raises the possibility of developing new treatments designed to prevent these clumps of proteins from escaping from the appendix.
The results appear in the Oct. 31 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
Dr. Rachel Dolhun, Vice President of Medical Communications at the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, described the link between Parkinson's disease and the appendix as "particularly interesting".
"But it is important to point out that there are associations and that they do not establish causality," he said. "In other words, it's not definitive that undergoing an appendectomy will reduce [el] The risk of Parkinson's ".
Dolhun added that "further research on the association between the gut and the brain could potentially lead to a deeper understanding of the causes of Parkinson's disease, in addition to the onset and progression of Parkinson's disease. and how to intervene to stop it.
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