Association Between Stroke and Parkinson’s Disease: a Meta-analysis

Parkinson’s disease (PD) and stroke are both associated with aging, but the relationship between these two disorders remains unclear. Recent evidence has shown that they frequently co-occur and are influenced by each another, although some studies have found inconsistent results. We performed this meta-analysis of patients with PD on stroke risk to clarify the relationship between these two disorders on the basis of the studies published from 1975 to July 2019 in the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases. In total, 13 case–control studies met the inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. The pooled odds ratio (OR) for PD in relation to the stroke risk was 1.72 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.19–2.49). The OR for the presence of cerebral infarct among PD in the four studies was 1.35 (95% CI 1.04–1.74). Moreover, the OR for the presence of stroke pathology among PD in the four postmortem studies was 1.86 (95% CI 1.17–2.98). In conclusion, our meta-analysis suggests that there is an association between stroke and PD. Sensitivity analysis was used to test the robustness of our results through the sequential removal of each one study at time, in order to investigate if a single study was driving the study results. These results indicate that PD and stroke may have a common pathogenesis and may share preventive treatment measures.