The past year has made me feel like a pincushion. I have had 3 Covid shots, 2 shingles shots, a pneumonia shot and a flu shot in addition to having blood drawn twice which, even though it isn’t a shot, involves poking me with a sharp needle. I did all of this at the recommendation of my doctor, to protect my health, but also because I know that I have a responsibility to protect my husband from transmissible diseases. I could survive the infections, but could he? Googling the risks of influenza for someone with Parkinson’s Disease took me in a totally unexpected direction, looking back at whether he had once the flu rather than what it might do to him now.

A study conducted in Denmark simply asked the question “Is influenza or other infection associated with Parkinson disease?” This question has been around since the 1918 flu epidemic and a later surge in people being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. The researchers looked at health records for 60,000 people, 10,000 of them with the Parkinson’s diagnosis and the rest as a control group. They found that the people who were diagnosed with PD had a greater rate of prior flu infections. The study was not definitive, but does suggest a link between the two illnesses.

So, this brings me back to my thoughts on being a pincushion. Perhaps all of those pricks are helpful in that they keep me from bringing a disease home to my husband but they also might help me avoid the diagnosis myself. Who would have thought that a bout of the flu could potentially have such a drastic outcome years later? There is still so much we don’t know about this disease, I will get all my shots so I can be as proactive as possible in protecting us both.

 To see the original study visit Long-term Risk of Parkinson Disease Following Influenza and Other Infections | Geriatrics | JAMA Neurology | JAMA Network or for a brief synopsis check out this article from the New York Times Can the Flu Contribute to Parkinson’s Disease? – The New York Times (nytimes.com).