Scientists have found that distinctive patterns in gut bacteria can identify people at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease years before symptoms appear.
The microbes living in a person’s gut may signal their risk of developing Parkinson’s disease before any symptoms appear, a new study has found.
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Researchers from University College London (UCL) found that people with the disease, as well as those who are genetically predisposed to it, carry distinctive patterns of gut bacteria.
“In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the links between Parkinson’s disease – a brain disorder – and gut health,” said Anthony Schapira, lead investigator of the study at UCL.
He added that the study has strengthened the existing evidence and shown that gut microbes may serve as an early warning signal of Parkinson’s risk years before symptoms begin.
The researchers at UCL, together with the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, analysed clinical and fecal data from study participants in the United Kingdom and Italy.
The study included 271 people with Parkinson’s disease, 43 carriers of the GBA1 variant – a gene variant that can increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease by up to 30-fold – who had no clinical symptoms, and 150 healthy control participants.
The results, published in Nature Medicine, found that more than a quarter of the microbial species making up the gut microbiome differed between people with Parkinson’s disease and healthy control participants.
Some microbes were more common among those with Parkinson’s disease, while others were more common among healthy study participants.
The researchers found this pattern was most noticeable among people in more advanced stages of Parkinson’s.
Most of these microbes also consistently differed in abundance when comparing healthy controls to people with the GBA1 gene variant who have not yet experienced any symptoms of the disease.
“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,” Schapira said.
Why early detection matters
Parkinson’s is the fastest-growing neurodegenerative disease in terms of prevalence, disability, and deaths, and the second most common after Alzheimer’s.
It is characterised by the progressive loss of dopamine-producing neurons. By the time motor symptoms appear, and a clinical diagnosis is possible, more than half of those neurons have already been lost, the researchers noted.
While treatments are being developed, the authors said that early detection is essential to make them effective.
“Gut microbiome analysis can enable us to identify individuals who are at risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, so that we can suggest ways for them to reduce their own risk, such as through dietary adjustments,” said co-lead author Stanislav Dusko Ehrlich.
The authors also acknowledge that further research is needed to understand what additional genetic or environmental factors determine whether a person ultimately develops Parkinson’s.
