Older adults who were treated for acute infection in youth or middle age have a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease, a new study finds.
Investigators analyzed data from people who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) between 1970 and 2016 in Sweden. Hospital treatment for infection five or more years before diagnosis was associated with 16% greater odds of developing Alzheimer’s and a 4% higher risk of Parkinson’s, compared with matched controls.
Notably, most of the cases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s tied to hospital-treated infections were among people who were diagnosed with these diseases before the age of 60, reported Jiangwei Sun, PHD, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
While not proving cause, “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,” Sun and colleagues wrote.
Prior research has linked neurodegenerative disease to infections. Another recent study has found that risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease nearly doubles for older adults in the year following a bout with COVID-19.
Full findings were published in PLOS Medicine.
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