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Abstract
Objective: To determine whether hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a risk factor for developing Parkinson disease (PD).
Methods: This nationwide population-based cohort study was based on data obtained from a dataset of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database for the period 2000 to 2010. A total of 49,967 patients with viral hepatitis were included for analysis. Furthermore, 199,868 people without viral hepatitis were included for comparisons. Patients with viral hepatitis were further grouped into 3 cohorts: hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, HCV infection, and HBV-HCV coinfection. In each cohort, we calculated the incidence of developing PD. A Cox proportional hazards model was applied to estimate the risk of developing PD in terms of hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).
Results: The crude HRs for developing PD was 0.66 (95% CI = 0.55–0.80) for HBV infection, 2.50 (95% CI = 2.07–3.02) for HCV infection, and 1.28 (95% CI = 0.88–1.85) for HBV-HCV coinfection. The association between HCV and PD remained statistically significant after adjustments for age, sex, and comorbidities (adjusted HR = 1.29, 95% CI = 1.06–1.56).
Conclusions: We conducted a large nationwide population-based study and found that patients with HCV exhibit a significantly increased risk of developing PD.
GLOSSARY
- BBB=
- blood–brain barrier;
- CI=
- confidence interval;
- HBV=
- hepatitis B virus;
- HCV=
- hepatitis C virus;
- HR=
- hazard ratio;
- ICD-9-CM=
- International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification;
- LHID=
- Longitudinal Health Insurance Database;
- NHI=
- National Health Insurance;
- NHIP=
- National Health Insurance Program;
- NHIRD=
- National Health Insurance Research Database;
- PD=
- Parkinson disease;
- PS=
- propensity score
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Supplemental data at Neurology.org
- Received September 3, 2015.
- Accepted in final form November 4, 2015.
- © 2015 American Academy of Neurology
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- Author Response to Boyd et al.
- Hepatitis C virus infection and Parkinson disease: Possible role for interferon
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