- Researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City recently conducted a study in mice to see if they could find out more about how Parkinson’s disease and changes in the gut are connected.
- Parkinson’s disease causes neurological changes that affect motor skills and may eventually lead to losing the ability to walk.
- The researchers suspected that a protein connected with Parkinson’s impacts people via the gut, years before they show hallmark symptoms of the disease.
- The scientists created an injection to administer to two groups of mice — one group was regular and the other was engineered to have similar genetic factors as humans in terms of developing Parkinson’s disorder.
- They suspected that the engineered mice would respond to the injection by exhibiting gastrointestinal symptoms, as people with Parkinson’s disease may experience.
While researchers know Parkinson’s disease affects the brain, they wonder whether it is possible that instead of the disease originating in the brain, it starts in the gut by way of an immune system response.
Some studies show a link between the gut microbiome and Parkinson’s. Researchers from Columbia University have now expanded on this line of research in a new study, which appears in the journal
After giving both groups of mice the injection they believed would trigger an immune system response — and thus gastrointestinal symptoms — the group of mice with human traits not only experienced constipation but also had nerve cell damage in their guts.
The researchers want to continue this line of research and see if they can eventually detect damage in the brain as well.
Parkinson’s disease, a type of movement disorder, can cause nerve cells to degenerate. When this happens, people with the disease may experience stiffness, tremors, shaking, and other uncontrollable movements.
Doctors diagnose the disease after ruling out other physiological causes for symptoms.
Before experiencing…
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