A mere appendix

Sherlock Holmes famously described himself in a way that resonates with A Fo Ben “I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.” So spare a thought for this lowly vestigial organ. In two independent datasets, involving a staggering 1.6 million people (91 million person years), the authors identified that prior appendectomy was associated with a lower risk for Parkinson’s disease. Interestingly, this was particularly so for people living in rural areas. Why might this be? The authors show that even in health the …