Sometimes researchers find the weirdest and most unlikely connections that seemingly have nothing to do with each other.
One such connection, which was published in the journal Gastroenterology, was recently made with Parkinson’s and what would seem like a body part that had zero connection to Parkinson’s.
Researchers analyzed the medical records of 62 million people who had appendectomies.
They discovered that people who had undergone this routine surgery to remove their appendix were 3.9 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease.
However, there are also contradictory reports.
Another study, published in Science Translational Medicine, analyzed the health information of 1,698,000 people and found that appendectomies reduced the risk of developing Parkinson’s later in life by 19.3 percent.
A 2015 study in the Journal of Movement Disorders confirms this. However, the subject pool was much smaller: only 295 participants. This study claims that those who had appendectomies earlier in life tended to develop Parkinson’s later than those who still had their appendixes.
Let’s forget about the contradicting studies for a moment. Why on Earth would two such disparate conditions be related?
One reason is related to a protein called alpha-synuclein.
Alpha-synuclein can mutate, causing the protein to cause cell death.
The two primary places where alpha-synuclein occurs in your body are in your brain and gut.
Your appendix is a part of your gut that hosts immune cells that are meant to prevent microbes from coming into your body from the environment.
The most common current theory is that environmental microbes cause the mutation of the alpha-synuclein proteins in your body.
At this point, the cause-and-effect relation between Parkinson’s and appendectomies is purely speculation.