MONDAY, Nov. 4, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Adults who have received multiple penicillin courses have a modestly lower risk for Parkinson disease (PD), according to a study published in the October issue of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders.

Gian Pal, M.D., from the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and colleagues conducted a nested case-control study to examine the association between antimicrobial exposure and newly diagnosed PD. Each one of 12,557 PD cases was matched by age, sex, and year of diagnosis (index date) with up to 15 controls (80,804 controls).

The researchers observed an inverse dose-response relationship between the number of penicillin courses and PD risk across multiple time periods (five or more courses: odds ratios, 0.85 and 0.84 for one to five and six to 10 years prior, respectively). There was an inverse, but not significant, association seen for the number of macrolide courses with PD risk one to five years prior to the index date. An increased risk for PD was seen in association with exposure to two or more courses of antifungals one to five years prior (odds ratio, 1.16).

“These are all very mild, so it should not influence decisions about when to use antibiotics or antifungals,” Pal said in a statement. “The importance of the study is that it speaks to the idea that something is going on in the gut microbiome [that] could influence Parkinson’s disease.”

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