Microbiota can help predict Parkinson’s risk

The approach to neurodegenerative diseases has historically encountered a clinical wall: late diagnosis.

An international macro study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine sheds light on a possible marker that may be an indicator of risk of Parkinson’s.

The research reveals that the gut microbiome suffers specific alterations that act as an early marker, opening the door to detecting which people are most likely to develop the disease, long before motor symptoms appear.

Currently, Parkinson’s is mainly diagnosed when the patient begins to manifest tremors, stiffness, or slow movement.

The real structural problem is that, by the time these clinical signs appear and the health system reacts, the loss of dopaminergic neurons is already significant, what ails patients to purely symptomatic treatments.

Added to this medical challenge is the aspect of care. The study itself Nature Medicine measures the impact of this biological decline: It is estimated that the economic burden associated with disability, loss of social productivity, and paid care will increase dramatically, rising from $52 billion to $52 billion. 79 billion by 2037 only in the United States.

For this reason, the team of researchers has sequenced the genome and analyzed the feces of 271 patients with Parkinson’s, 150 healthy controls and 43 carriers of the mutation. GBA1 who do not yet manifest motor symptoms (called GBA-NMC).

The results reveal that the digestive system acts as a “snitch.” Experts have found that approximately one 25% of the gut microbiome of these people with a genetic predisposition is in an alarming intermediate state between that of healthy individuals and that of patients who already suffer from the declared disease.

Far from being a random change, this alteration of the flora follows a pattern. In patients who advance towards the biological decline of Parkinson’s, there is a worrying depression of butyrate-producing bacteria –which can be beneficial and anti-inflammatory– such as Roseburia either Faecalibacterium. In parallel, pro-inflammatory bacteria and oral residents proliferate abnormally, such as Streptococcus mutansas well as strains of the genus Bifidobacterium.

The most revealing thing is that the severity of this microbial alteration goes hand in hand with the dreaded prodromal symptomsthe warning signals that the body sends years before stiffness or tremor appears.

Those individuals with a more altered microbiome suffer in greater proportion depression, autonomic dysfunction, constipation, and REM sleep disorders. This finding consolidates the clinical model that, in many patients, the pathology begins in the enteric and autonomic nervous system before spreading irreversibly to the brain.