Research led by University College London has characterized a specific gut microbiome signature found in people with Parkinson’s disease.
Writing in Nature Medicine, the researchers also found that people carrying a genetic mutation in the GBA1 gene that put them at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease had gut microbiomes similar to people with the condition.
Parkinson’s is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in the U.S. after Alzheimer’s disease affecting more than one million people across the country. By the time full-blown motor symptoms emerge, a large degree of neurological damage has already occurred, so much work is underway to find ways to predict and diagnose early disease, as well as to develop more effective treatments.
“In recent years there has been a growing recognition of the links between Parkinson’s disease—a brain disorder—and gut health,” said co-lead author Anthony Schapira, MD, a professor at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, in a press statement.
“Here we have strengthened that evidence and shown that microbes in the gut can reveal signs of Parkinson’s and may be an early warning signal… years before symptom onset.”
For this study, the researchers evaluated gut microbiome samples from 271 Parkinson’s disease patients, 43 people carrying GBA1 risk variants who did not yet have disease symptoms and 150 healthy controls. They also validated their findings in a further 638 people with Parkinson’s and 319 healthy controls from the U.K., Korea, and Turkey.
Schapira and team used DNA sequencing to see which bacterial species were present in each person’s gut. Comparing people with Parkinson’s disease to healthy controls, they found 176 bacterial species that were more or less common in people with the condition.
For example, people with Parkinson’s had more potentially pro‑inflammatory bacteria, including Bifidobacterium longum and B. dentium, Streptococcus mutans, and Lactobacillus paragasseri, than healthy controls.
In contrast, healthy controls had more helpful, butyrate‑producing gut bacteria from including Roseburia intestinalis, R. inulinivorans and some Faecalibacterium species and less pro-inflammatory species.
Notably, people in the at-risk group who carried a GBA1 risk variant had a gut microbiome somewhere between healthy controls and people with Parkinson’s, suggesting that the composition of microbes in the gut may change over time as the disease develops. In this group, 142 of the 176 species that differed in people with Parkinson’s versus healthy controls also showed changed abundance.
“For the first time we identify bacteria in the gut of people with Parkinson’s that can also be found in those with a genetic risk for the disease, but before they develop symptoms. Importantly, these same changes can be found in a small proportion of the general population that may put them at increased risk for Parkinson’s,” said Schapira.
“This discovery opens the way not only to see if the bacteria are a way to identify those at risk of Parkinson’s, but also to see if changing the bacterial population, through dietary changes or medication, can reduce a person’s risk for Parkinson’s.”
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