Parkinson’s disease and risk of pancreatic cancer: a population-based case-control study in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer in Taiwan. Methods: This was a case-control study using claim data of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. There were 13,861 subjects aged 20- 84 with newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer as cases and 55,444 randomly selected subjects without pancreatic cancer as controls from 1998 to 2011. Cases and controls were matched by sex, age and index year of diagnosing pancreatic cancer. The association of pancreatic cancer with Parkinson’s disease was evaluated by the multivariable logistic regression model to estimate the adjusted odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results: After adjusting for confounding factors including acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, diabetes mellitus, biliary stone, alcoholism, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, the multivariable logistic regression analysis showed the adjusted OR of pancreatic cancer was 0.82 for subjects with Parkinson’s disease (95% CI 0.55, 1.21), as compared with subjects without Parkinson’s disease. Conclusion: No association is detected between Parkinson’s disease and pancreatic cancer.