Viral hepatitis and Parkinson’s disease

This paper by Pakpoor et al,1 investigates if there is an association between viral hepatitis and Parkinson’s Disease (PD). English hospital episode and mortality data between 1999 and 2011 was used to look at cohorts of individuals with autoimmune hepatitis, chronic active hepatitis, HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Rates of PD were compared with a reference cohort. The standardised rate ratio (RR) of PD in these cohorts was 1.76 following hepatitis B infection (95% CI 1.28 to 2.37) (p<0.001) and 1.51 following infection with hepatitis C (95% CI 1.18 to 1.9) (p<0.001). No association was found with HIV, chronic active hepatitis or autoimmune hepatitis and the subsequent development of PD. When they analysed the data to look for PD in the first year following hepatitis B and C, infection rates went up to 1.81 (95% CI 1.29 to 2.5) for hepatitis B and 1.43 (95% CI 1.09 to 1.84) for hepatitis C. The authors conclude that there appears to be a …