Parkinson’s disease afflicts more than 10 million people worldwide. In the U.S. alone nearly 90,000 cases are diagnosed annually with an expected rise to 1.2 million by 2030.
Parkinson’s is a disease that affects the nervous system and causes uncontrollable body movements including shaking and stiffness and difficulty with balance and coordination. Symptoms gradually increase with age and in later stages can affect brain function, causing dementia-like symptoms and depression.
New research published in Nature Communications reveals widespread dysbiosis (disruption to the gut microbiome) in Parkinson’s sufferers and includes details of the specific microscopic species that are driving the imbalance.
In many cases, the findings confirm previous animal studies, but also may explain disease-specific mechanisms that weren’t necessarily linked to the microbiome. The metagenomics (study of all genetic material sampled from a community) collected stool of 490 persons with Parkinson’s and 234 neurologically healthy controls. …