The study found that people with hepatitis B were 76 per cent more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease, and people with hepatitis C were 51 per cent more likely to develop the crippling condition.
Hepatitis B is spread through contact with blood and body fluids of an infected person, such as unprotected sex, sharing needles, getting a tattoo or piercing with unsterilised tools or sharing razors or toothbrushes with an infected person.
Hepatitis C is spread through blood-to-blood contact such as sharing needles, razors and toothbrushes and is passed on at birth by infected mothers.
While both can lead to serious illness, many people have few symptoms and do not realise they have the virus, especially at first.
Oxford University researchers examined hospital records from a large British database.
They looked for records of people with a first case of hepatitis B, hepatitis C, autoimmune hepatitis, chronic active hepatitis and HIV from 1999 to 2011.
Those people were compared to the hospital records of people with relatively minor conditions such as cataract surgery, bunions and knee replacement surgery.
For all of the participants, researchers looked at the records to see who later developed Parkinson’s disease.
There were nearly 22,000 people with hepatitis B, 48,000 with hepatitis C, 6,000 with autoimmune hepatitis, 4,000 with chronic active hepatitis and nearly 20,000 with HIV.
They were compared to more than six million people with minor conditions.
The study, published online by the journal Neurology, found that a total of 44 people with hepatitis B developed Parkinson’s disease, compared to 25 cases that would be expected in the general population.
For people with hepatitis C, 73 people developed Parkinson’s disease, where about 49 cases would have been expected in the general population.
Study author Julia Pakpoor, of Oxford University, said: “The development of Parkinson’s disease is complex, with both genetic and environmental factors.
“It’s possible that the hepatitis virus itself or perhaps the treatment for the infection could play a role in triggering Parkinson’s disease or it’s possible that people who are susceptible to hepatitis infections are also more susceptible to Parkinson’s disease.
“We hope that identifying this relationship may help us to better understand how Parkinson’s disease develops.”
She said people with autoimmune hepatitis, chronic active hepatitis and HIV didn’t have an increased rate of Parkinson’s disease.
A previous study from Taiwan showed a relationship between hepatitis C and Parkinson’s disease, but it did not show any relationship for hepatitis B.
Ms Pakpoor said that limitations of the current study included that they could not adjust for lifestyle factors such as smoking and alcohol use, which could affect Parkinson’s disease risk.
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