Association between inflammatory bowel disease and Parkinsons disease: seek and you shall find?

We read with great interest the article by Villumsen et al1 about the association between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Parkinson's disease (PD). Villumsen et al estimated the risk of developing PD to be 22% higher in a Danish IBD population than in a non-IBD population.

During the last decade, evidence has accumulated that shared biological mechanisms are involved in the development of IBD and PD.2 However, the clinical co-occurrence of IBD and PD has only been investigated to a limited extent and with inconsistent results.3–5 Thus, concerns have been raised about how best to interpret this possible association.

In a recently published article by our group, we too demonstrated a positive association between PD and IBD.6 We observed that Swedish patients with IBD were at 30% higher risk of subsequently developing PD than were non-IBD individuals. Furthermore, that patients with...

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