Microflora and parkinsonism

Parkinson's disease has been linked to intestinal microflora

Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science

Bacteria were to blame for the incurable and massive death of brain cells in Parkinsonism: the neurodegenerative disease was associated with the activity of the intestinal microflora.

Parkinson's disease is neurodegenerative and leads to irreversible death of brain cells, but its root may be hiding in a completely different place. In fact, there are strange and suspicious reports of digestive disorders in people who only years later began to show tremors, coordination difficulties and other signs of Parkinsonism.

Against the background of other mysteries of the disease, which still remains poorly understood and incurable, these reports have not attracted enough attention. However, the new work of Sarkis Mazmanian and his colleagues from the California University of Technology gives them a completely different meaning.

In the article by Sampson et al. Gut Microbiota Regulate Motor Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Model of Parkinson's Disease, published by the journal Cell, scientists pay attention to the fact that patients with Parkinsonism have significant changes in the intestines. In particular, alpha-synuclein, a small protein normally dissolved in many brain cells, forms so–called Levi's corpuscles in patients for an unknown reason, which, growing up, damage neurons. The same insoluble strands of alpha-synuclein in parkinsonism are found in intestinal cells.

The scientists used GM mice predisposed to early and rapid deposition of these plaques. One group of animals was raised under normal conditions, the other in sterile conditions, where they could not acquire normal microflora. As it turned out, such mice showed both less pronounced signs of parkinsonism and a smaller number of alpha-synuclein plaques in brain neurons. Moreover, the use of conventional antibiotics slowed down the development of the disease in mice living in non-sterile conditions.

Finally, in another series of experiments, scientists showed that injecting sterile mice with bacteria from the intestinal microflora of people with Parkinsonism led to its rapid development in them as well (the right part of the picture from the article in Cell – VM). Bacteria from the intestines of healthy people did not lead to such an effect.

"It was a Eureka moment: the mice were genetically identical, they only had different microflora,– sums up Sarkis Mazmanyan. – We have shown for the first time a biological link between the gut microbiota and Parkinson's disease. Broadly speaking, the work demonstrates that neurodegenerative disease can also begin in the intestine, and not only in the brain, as was believed until now."

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  06.12.2016