Patients with Parkinson’s disease predict a lower incidence of colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND: Recent theory on the “gut-brain axis” suggests a close relationship between the dysfunction of the gut and the disorders of the brain. METHODS: We performed a systemic literature search followed by a multi-step inclusion selection for all studies on the risk of Colorectal cancer (CRC) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients using the following databases: PubMed, EMBASE and WOS. Relative risk (RR) and the 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated using either the random-effects model or the fixed-effects meta-analysis model, based on the assessment of heterogeneity. RESULTS: Seventeen studies involving a total of 375,964 PD patients and 879,307 cancer patients were included. Independent meta-analyses for cohort studies and case-control studies showed that the overall pooled RR of the cohort studies was 0.78 (0.66–0.91), and that of the case-control studies was 0.78 (0.65–0.94), indicating that patients with PD have a significantly decreased risk for CRC. The significant lower risk is present in both the colon and the rectum subgroups classified by tumor location. Moreover, the risk for CRC is significantly lower in America (RR = 0.58), Europe (RR = 0.82) and Asia (RR = 0.83) compared to the control population. CONCLUSION: The occurrence of CRC was significantly lower in patients with diagnosis of PD. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-021-02497-z.