SCIENTIFIC HUB

Follow the evidence.

SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE · MED

Risk of Parkinson's disease after human papillomavirus infection: a nationwide cohort study.

BMC Med · 2025-11-07

DOI: 10.1186/s12916-025-04444-wPMID: 41204269

Open accessResearch Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; research-article; Journal ArticleOriginal source ↗

Research overview

The text below is the source article’s original abstract under a verified reuse license. cc by

BackgroundLittle is known about the association between human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and Parkinson's disease (PD). This study aimed to explore the risk of incident PD following HPV infection.MethodsPatients 40 years or older with HPV infection diagnosed between 1996 and 2013 were included in the case group and were 1:4 matched with controls from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. A second matched control group of patients with acute respiratory infection (ARI) was also included. The outcome was incident PD, as determined using Cox proportional hazards.ResultsThe study population included 80,318 patients with HPV infection, 322,952 non-HPV infection matched controls, and 80,318 ARI infection matched controls. There were 456 incident PD cases in the HPV group (0.84 per 1000 person-year), 2499 in the control group (0.43 per 1000 person-year), and 655 in the ARI control group (0.45 per 1000 person-year). After adjustment for confounding factors, patients with HPV infection were associated with a 1.25-fold higher risk of incident PD (hazard ratio, 1.25, 95% confidence interval, 1.13 to 1.39) than controls. This finding remains consistent when comparing to the ARI control group and in sensitivity analyses. Stratified by sex, only male patients with HPV infection had a 1.48-fold higher risk of PD compared with the control group (1.28 to 1.71) and a 1.31-fold higher risk of PD compared with the ARI control group (1.09 to 1.59); however, no significant associations were observed in the female patients with HPV.ConclusionsThis study suggests an increased risk of incident PD in patients with HPV infection, especially for males.

Scientific assessment

01

Research question

Assess the question within the original study’s scope.

02

Methods & sample

Check the source article for study design and sample details.

03

Key findings

An editorially approved findings summary is not yet published for this record.

04

Limitations

Generalizability, bias and clinical meaning require separate assessment.

Methods, samples and clinical conclusions are not inferred from bibliographic metadata.