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Scientists Find Link Between Parkinson's Disease and the Appendix (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Scientists have found further evidence that the gut, or more specifically the appendix, might play a role in the development of Parkinson's disease. The international team of scientists reviewed two datasets, including a large registry from Sweden, and found that removal of the appendix was associated with a decreased risk of developing Parkinson's disease. They also found that the human appendix contains clumps of a protein called alpha-synuclein in a form associated with the disease. There's more work to be done, and the authors are not advocating that people preemptively remove their appendixes, but they hope that the research could provide a pathway towards treatment.
The study found that of the 1,144,745 Swedes who did not have appendectomies, 1,608 had Parkinson's, but of the 551,003 who had, only 644 had Parkinson's. This is amounts to a 16.9% decrease in the odds of acquiring the disease -- but in absolutes, that's the difference between an 0.14 percent chance of acquiring the disease for those who hadn't gotten their appendix removed versus an 0.11 percent chance for those who had. The effect was also stronger in those living in rural areas, according to the study published today in Science Translational Medicine. The researchers also found that for those who had appendectomies at least 30 years before developing Parkinson's, the procedure was associated with a 3.6-year delay in disease onset. The appendix samples contained alpha-synuclein proteins and shortened and mis-folded alpha-synucleins like the ones found in people with Parkinson's disease. Professor Viviane Labrie from the Cancer of Neurodegenerative Science at the Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan suggests that the alpha-synucleins "can travel up the nerve that connects the G.I. tract to the brain." She added: "If it were to enter the brain, it can seed and spread from there and have neurotoxic effects that could eventually lead to Parkinson's disease."
The study found that of the 1,144,745 Swedes who did not have appendectomies, 1,608 had Parkinson's, but of the 551,003 who had, only 644 had Parkinson's. This is amounts to a 16.9% decrease in the odds of acquiring the disease -- but in absolutes, that's the difference between an 0.14 percent chance of acquiring the disease for those who hadn't gotten their appendix removed versus an 0.11 percent chance for those who had. The effect was also stronger in those living in rural areas, according to the study published today in Science Translational Medicine. The researchers also found that for those who had appendectomies at least 30 years before developing Parkinson's, the procedure was associated with a 3.6-year delay in disease onset. The appendix samples contained alpha-synuclein proteins and shortened and mis-folded alpha-synucleins like the ones found in people with Parkinson's disease. Professor Viviane Labrie from the Cancer of Neurodegenerative Science at the Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan suggests that the alpha-synucleins "can travel up the nerve that connects the G.I. tract to the brain." She added: "If it were to enter the brain, it can seed and spread from there and have neurotoxic effects that could eventually lead to Parkinson's disease."
I'm pretty sure this underlines the fact that humans were not designed by some intelligent superbeing in the sky.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nothing!
The numbers are so miniscule it is not even worth discussing. It's equivalent to my buying two lottery tickets instead of one.
Caution: Contents under pressure
appendix can cause myelitis.
Aka data dredging: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
It's like finding a correlation between the number of letters in a spelling bee's winning word and the number of people in the United States killed by venomous spiders, but with no connection actually exists, is only a coincidence.
So do I need to get my appendix removed?
Zoid.com
554k have had appendix removed in this study which included 1/5th the population of Sweden. That's a lot. Removing an organ should always be a last resort, and should be much more rare. All this proves is that modern medicine is much more "wandering around in the dark" than they would have you believe.
Keep your appendix, keep your tonsils, and keep your foreskin...unless removing it is *the only way* to prevent imminent death.
when you work backwards from your conclusion.
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get that mf out of me!!
So adter decades and decades of work people figured out Ulcers were bacterial not a defect in proteins coating the stomach walls.. Very recently it came to light that Alzheimers may be a viral or bacterial infection and the amyloid plaques actually are a defense mechanism. WHich explains why all the anti-amaloid drugs failed.
Amaloids come from a kind of protein misfolding.
Now they are attributing parkinsons to misfolded protein.
This study is interesting because we now suspect the appendix's purpose is to be a place where gut bacteria can go dormant and wait to re-seed the gut to maintain diversity. In the age of antibiotics and the rise of c. Difficile the appendix reseed may have become more important. THose infections are now treated with fecal transplants.
So appexicies harbor "good" bacteria. Perhaps the misfolded proteins their are their to keep them alive and dormant or to knock down the infection by bad bacteria (appendicitis). Perhaps it is the bacteria migrating to the brain that is brining along the misfolded proteins.
Just saying this sounds like "here we go again" when it comes to blaming the proteins for a bacterial problem. But maybe they are right. THe thing is, and the clue to the other two cases,was asking why didn't those bad proteins get evolved away. The appendix is not only in other species but it has been independently evolved in multiple species. It's there for some damn good reason and so are the proteins screted there.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The one thing that we can deduce from this study is that 100% of the people that had appendectomies don't have an appendix anymore.
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Together we can change the world, just one random act of kindness at a time. -- Ron Hall
I could be that people who have some genetic profile are more likely to get Parkinsson and problem with their appendix. Or it could be that people who eat a certain food or exercise in a certain way are more (or less) likely to get Parkinsson and problem with their appendix.
There appears to be a strong positive correlation between people who vote for Trump and people who have their heads up their ass.
Just sayin'.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Interesting! So, people who are predisposed to eventually developing Parkinson's disease, are at an increased risk of having that manifest as an inflamed appendix requiring operation. Not only that, but this seems to be an early warning sign before the main disease (Parkinson's) manifests as well.
Brought to you by the "In medicine the exact reverse causal hypothesis always also sounds entirely reasonable too" department.
Incidentally, every time somebody discovers yet another brain-gut-axis link, I feel more and more sorry for Andrew Wakefield.
This seems like a very low correlation for the cause to be the appendix. More than likely the appendix is merely capturing and concentrating these proteins, perhaps well before the symptoms of Parkinsons have manifested. That hardly means the appendix is the source of the proteins.
Better known as 318230.
If we start removing appendices, there won't be any place in the medical books to list the connection to Parkinson's!
Those prone to appendicitis be less susceptible to Parkinsons for the same reason they suffer appendicitis in the first place. There are know genetic factors in the predisposition to both diseases.
Could there be some other environmental cause? Pesticides and herbicides exposure is a known risk factor in Parkinsons.
Appendectomy is know to slow peoples recovery after bouts of food poisoning, because their gut flora recovers more slowly. The Appendix is known to be a reservoir of these.
I like to see how this compared with non-surgical intervention for appendicitis, which was reported recently as as gaining favour for that latter reason.
It is grounds for further investigation.
Furthermore the researchers do not claim it is.
Strawman cliches are not +1 insightful.
For the last 20 years I have said and published my opinion that we have no useless parts.
I've always believed that both the Tonsils and the Appendix are part of a backup immunity system. If the primary immunity system were to come under attack, they release a molecule of which the backup system interacts with and kills that which is attacking.
If leveraged correctly, this could be utilized to create a cure for many diseases.
Very recently it came to light that Alzheimers may be a viral or bacterial infection and the amyloid plaques actually are a defense mechanism.
That possibility is NOT a recent revelation. We have no evidence of a specific pathogen but that's been on the list of possible causes for a long time. More than a few types of cancer are caused by viruses and many other diseases we don't normally associate with viruses or bacteria. My wife is a pathologist and she's spoken about this very topic to me 20 years ago. It wouldn't at all be shocking if some or even all Alzheimer's turned out to be caused by a pathogen. We just don't have strong evidence currently to support that hypothesis though perhaps there has been some recent data that I'm not aware of. (obviously i'm not an expert)
THe thing is, and the clue to the other two cases,was asking why didn't those bad proteins get evolved away.
For there to be an evolutionary pressure it needs to have an effect on reproduction. Lot's of diseases don't affect anyone until after they have passed the age where they would spawn offspring so there is no direct mechanism to remove the proteins from the gene pool.
My father and his brothers died of diabetes. We are his 3 children and 2 have developed diabetes post 35 age. The one with appendix removed at age 25, does not have it even at his current age of 49.
Your body isn't made to hurt itself
I don't know what this is all about, but it either isn't correct or is based on some other information that has been effected in other ways.
Or it's part of a satanic ritual in which everyone removes their appendix and they're taken and eaten by the elite and the politicians. It makes about this much sense.
I'm smelling some statistical bullshit....and some bad correlations
No?
It didn't happen.
Here's an interesting popular press article from this year talking about the slow turn on this theory. Sure people have had that on the list of possibilities but no proof. Now the pendulum is swinging that direction, but only recently.
https://www.statnews.com/2018/...
It really is turning THIS YEAR, because it's only in the last year that the most advanced and well studied Anti-alzheimer's drugs targeting plaque forming pathways failed. Thus old speculations are being reconsidered and there's a body of proof to support them.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
For a direct causation, I would have expected something closer to +50% difference. This sounds more like it has something to do with the procedure of the appendix removal, not the appendix removal itself. Like maybe the type of sutures or medicine used for healing, or anesthesia.
In fact, at almost 60, I'm still 100% factory equipment! Appendix, wisdom teeth, no body parts have been removed. My mom said the reason I was the only one in the family that didn't have to have their wisdom teeth removed was because I had a big mouth. LOL, well, she was right in a way. ;)
Or, come on, at least make it something that validates my worldview generally. It doesn't specifically need to be about pesticides or GMOs, but if it could somehow be tied to over-consumption or hobbies I find distasteful, that would be great.
Or, hear me out, could Parkinson's somehow be caused by how Facebook steals features from Instagram - or, no, wait, could it be because people keep overhyping AI?
This appendix crap is a non-starter.
The numbers are very interesting from a scientific point of view
Really? One of the first rules of scientific data analysis is that correlation does not imply causation. So far there is literally nothing to see here scientifically. It only becomes interesting if they actually manage to find that the appendix has a role in causing Parkinsons. Given the tiny effect on the actual rate of the disease it is unlikely to have any sort of major role since you are only ~16% less likely to get it without your appendix. Indeed the very weak correlation suggests that either there are many different causes or it is something very different that may, itself, weakly correlate with having an appendectomy.
A related study also found that people with freckles live longer and happier lives. Go science! Go science! Go science! Whoop! Whoop!
I am so tired of these "opinions" being posted where you scream "Correlation is not causation" on every goddamned subject you don't agree with.
Git fuckt.
It is a well documented historical fact that the KKK supports trump. There was a whole scandal about it and everything.
It's also a weel documented historical fact that what you assert hasn't been true since before 1964, but I know you already know that cause I've had to tell you 3 or 4 fucking times. You are a disingenuous piece of shit partisan hack.