This looks really important to me, it's the first strong evidence linking the gut microbiome to a brain-based disease, and links in to Mady Hornig and Ian Lipkin's work on the microbiome in mecfs, which assumes a central role for the gut-brain axis. This new Parkinson's disease research even focuses on key role for microglia, which many researchers think could play a central role in mecfs.
Original study in prestigious journal,
Cell
Gut Microbiota Regulate Motor Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Model of Parkinson’s Disease: Cell
The work is on a 'mouse model' of Parkinson's Disease (PD), genetically engineered to have high levels of synuclein, the protein that clumps into fibres in PD, mice that go on to develop PD. Except it turns out the don't get PD if reared in gerrm-free conditions where they have no gut microbiome (trillions of bacteria, but viruses and fungi too).
Following up the observation that microbiota in PD patients differs from healthy controls, they added gut bacteria from humans with PD to these germ-free mice, which triggered both neuroinflammation and symptoms of PD. Adding gut bacteria from healthy humans has no effect.
And adult mice with the PD-like disease have the conditioin improved by antibiotics that wipe out the microbiome, and the symptoms get worse again when the microbiome is added back.
Intriguing, huh?
OK, a critical difference with PD is that was already a
proven link to the gut. As for mecfs, many PD patients have gut problems either leading up to PD or after onset. However, PD researchers have found the synuclein protein found in the brain, also clumps in the gut nervous system, the 'enteric brain'..
Putting this is a wider context, there are big concerns that links between the gut and disease are simple association, rather than gut problems causing disease. The best evidence (that I know of) for causal role is in obesity and inflammatory bowel disease - both diseases the feature the gut in a big way (in both cases transplanting bacteria in mice models can bring on the disease, as for PD). However, this is the first case where gut issues are linked to a disease of the brain.
I'm hoping Cell won't mind me using their excellent graphical abstract here since the whole piece is open access
View the original
here