Hopes that a treatment for Parkinson’s is on the horizon have been raised after research suggested tetanus jabs guard against the incurable disease.
People recently vaccinated against tetanus after a wound infection have been found to be half as likely to be diagnosed with the condition.
Scientists suspect that tetanus bacteria are responsible for attacking the nervous system of Parkinson’s sufferers.
Around 153,000 people in the UK have Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative condition which causes pain, shaking limbs and difficulties moving. Every hour two more people are diagnosed and the disease costs the NHS more than £725 million a year.
Former Newsnight presenter and University Challenge quizmaster Jeremy Paxman, who has Parkinson’s, has said it ‘makes you wish you hadn’t been born’.
The new findings suggest widely available tetanus vaccines could prevent or treat Parkinson’s, which usually affects older people and is caused by the death of a subset of brain cells that control movement.
How tetanus bacteria attack these cells is unknown, but the researchers speculate they may access the brain via nerve cells in the nose.
The researchers analysed the records of a large health provider in Israel to see if any kind of vaccines given in adulthood increased or reduced the risk of Parkinson’s.
They looked at 1,500 people who had been diagnosed between the ages of 45 and 75, and compared them with a control group – five times larger – of non-sufferers selected to have similar characteristics to those with the disease.
They found that 1.6 per cent of those with Parkinson’s had received the tetanus vaccine before their diagnosis, compared with 3.2 per cent of those without.
The protective effect was also bigger in people who’d had the vaccine more recently, with no one developing Parkinson’s within two years of being immunised.
Dr Ariel Israel, of Tel Aviv University, told New Scientist magazine: ‘The closer to the vaccine date, the less likely individuals are to get diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.’
Adults are given a tetanus vaccine if they have a wound contaminated with soil, faeces or saliva, as the bacterium that causes tetanus, Clostridium tetani, can be found in them.
Claire Bale, associate director of research at the charity Parkinson’s UK, says the findings raise ‘the interesting possibility that tetanus vaccinations could have the potential to offer protection against the development of Parkinson’s and may even be able to slow progression of the condition.
‘As this is something current treatments can’t do, this would be hugely significant if realised.’
