No Association between Chronic Osteomyelitis and Parkinson's Disease in Older People in Taiwan

Shih-Wei Lai^1,2, Juhn-Cherng Liu^1,3, Chun-Hung Tseng^1,4, Chih-Hsin Muo^5,6 and Kuan-Fu Liao^7,8*

¹School of Medicine, Taiwan

²Department of Family Medicine, Taiwan

³Department of Radiology, Taiwan

⁴Department of Neurology, Taiwan

⁵Department of Public Health, Taiwan

⁶Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan

⁷Graduate Institute of Integrated Medicine, and China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan

⁸Department of Internal Medicine, Taichung Tzu Chi General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan

Corresponding Author:

Kuan-Fu Liao
Department of Internal Medicine, Taichung Tzu Chi General Hospital
No.66, Sec. 1, Fongsing Road, Tanzi District
Taichung City, 427, Taiwan
Tel: 886-4-2205-2121
Fax: 886-4-2203-3986
E-mail: kuanfuliao@yahoo.com.tw

Received date: April 02, 2013; Accepted date: May 18, 2013; Published date: May 22, 2013

Citation: Lai SW, Liu JC, Tseng CH, Muo CH, Liao KF (2013) No Association between Chronic Osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s Disease in Older People in Taiwan. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 3:112. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000112

Copyright: © 2013 Lai SW, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Abstract

The aim of this study is to explore whether chronic osteomyelitis is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease in older people in Taiwan. By using the database from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program, this case-control study consisted of 4686 subjects aged 65 years or older with newly diagnosed Parkinson’s disease as the case group and 18744 subjects without Parkinson’s disease as the control group. After adjusting for cofounding factors, multivariable logistic regression analysis showed no association between chronic osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s disease in both gender (odds ratio = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.37-1.36 in men, and odds ratio = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.45-1.83 in women, respectively). We conclude that no association can be detected between chronic osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s disease in older people in Taiwan.

Keywords

Chronic osteomyelitis; Older people; Parkinson’s disease

Parkinson’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disease mainly affecting the older people. Despite the real causes of Parkinson’s disease remain unknown, extensive evidence has shown that chronic neuroinflammation associated with central and systemic inflammation might play a key role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease [1-3]. On the other hand, chronic osteomyelitis is also a chronic inflammatory disorder mainly caused by bacterial infection [4,5]. Therefore, we make a hypothesis that chronic osteomyelitis could be associated with an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease through chronic inflammatory process. In order to explore this issue, we conducted this case-control study by utilizing the database from the Taiwan National Health Insurance program. The details of insurance program can be cited in previous studies [6-8]. This present study included 4686 subjects aged 65 years or older with new diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease as the cases (2457 men, mean age 77.0 years and standard deviation 6.18 years, and 2229 women, mean age 76.3 years and standard deviation 6.51 years, respectively) (based on International Classification of Diseases 9th Revision-Clinical Modification, ICD-9 332), and 18744 subjects without Parkinson’s disease as the controls (9828 men, mean age 76.4 years and standard deviation 6.64 years, and 8916 women, mean age 75.6 years and standard deviation 7.02 years, respectively). The date of diagnosing Parkinson’s disease was defined as the index date. The cases and the controls were matched with age, gender, and index date from 2000 to 2010. Chronic osteomyelitis (ICD-9 730.1x) was diagnosed before the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. We analyzed the data separately by gender. In order to reduce biased results, subjects with other major psychiatric diseases (ICD - 9 291-293, 294.0, 294.8, 294.9, 295, 296.0, 296.1, 296.4–296.9, 297 and 298) or mental retardation (ICD - 9 317 - 319) were excluded from this study.

In men, there were 13 subjects with chronic osteomyelitis among Parkinson disease cases (0.53%) and 55 subjects with chronic osteomyelitis among controls (0.56%) (Chi-square test for p>0.05). In women, there were 12 subjects with chronic osteomyelitis among Parkinson disease cases (0.54%) and 37 subjects with chronic osteomyelitis among control subjects (0.41%) (Chi-square test for p>0.05). After controlling for cofounding factors, multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that no association could be detected between chronic osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s disease in both gender (odds ratio = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.37-1.36 in men, and odds ratio = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.45-1.83 in women, respectively) (Table 1).

Despite the literature has shown that chronic inflammatory process might be involved in chronic osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s disease, [1-5] however, no relevant studies can be cited to date. In this present study, no association is found between chronic osteomyelitis and Parkinson’s disease in both genders. However, only 117 patients with chronic osteomyelitis were selected. That is, the number of chronic osteomyelitis is probably too small to reach clinical significance. Therefore, additional studies with large sample size are warranted to clarify this issue.

Funding

This study was supported in part by Taiwan Department of Health Clinical Trial and Research Center of Excellence (DOH102- TD-B-111-004). The funding agency did not influence the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Table 1: Odds ratio and 95% confidence interval of Parkinson's disease associated with chronic osteomyelitis and other co-morbidities.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the National Health Research Institute in Taiwan for providing the insurance claims data.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors disclose no conflicts of interest.

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