Exploring the Link Between Antimicrobials and Parkinson’s Disease: What's Next?

Data Sharing and Publications
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Hi all!

I’m excited to share findings from our recent study, “Effects of Antimicrobial Exposure on the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease”. This work used a large UK-representative dataset to explore how exposure to antibiotics and antifungal medications might influence PD risk.

Here are the highlights:

Penicillins: A higher number of courses was associated with a modestly reduced risk of PD.
Antifungals: Recent exposure to antifungal medications was linked to a slightly increased risk of PD.

I am trying to consider next steps based on this work. Any input on types of datasets or analysis frameworks could deepen our understanding of these associations? What other exposures or confounders should we consider in future studies?

Looking forward to further discussion!

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Thanks for sharing, Gian, interesting results! Probing the underlying mechanism(s) at play here would be really exciting. Is the thinking here that the increased or decreased risk is originating from an interaction between the mycobiome and microbiome (gut or otherwise), with PD as a downstream development?

Also curious if any of our members with expressed interest in epidemiological data (@Sherpi , @mengxi.yang , @Vidash ) or microbiome data (@kiratos , @samantha.schaffner , @sarkis ) would have insights as to how @gdp22 and his team could expand on this study?

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@gdp22 @gginnan
Here are my thoughts
Would love more research into what the minimum dose and duration of antimicrobial exposure is required to increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease. Interesting if this study were to be done in Africa where they is largely an abuse of antimicrobial usage in population.

Secondly, are there certain individuals more susceptible to the potential effects of antimicrobial agents on Parkinson’s disease risk (e.g., those with a family history of the disease)?

I think there are conflicting opinions on the exposure to antimicrobial agents during a specific period (e.g., childhood, adulthood) and its association with an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. That would be an interesting expansion of the current work

Am curious as to how these antimicrobial agents interact with other potential risk factors for Parkinson’s disease, such as pesticides, heavy metals such as lead and mercury and genetics. And how are we to measure the contribution of each to the risk or the combined risk?

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