AD/PD 2021 | The role of the microbiome in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease
Rejko Krüger, MD, University of Luxembourg, Belvaux, Luxembourg, discusses the role of the gut microbiome in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease (PD), which is an emerging topic in the field. Gastrointestinal dysfunction in PD was mentioned in the first description of the disease by James Parkinson. More recently, studies have reported increasing evidence for the role of the microbiome in PD. These studies have demonstrated that PD patients have an altered microbiome composition. Therefore, it is hypothesized that a dysregulated microbiota could be a biomarker of the pathological process or even contribute to the disease’s pathogenesis. This interview took place during the AD/PD™ 2021 conference.
Transcript (edited for clarity)
I think that’s a very interesting and emerging topic. Although, already James Parkinson, who described initially the disease, found that there are impairments in the intestines, the bowel movements are reduced, there are swelling problems. So that also hints to something that is related to the gastrointestinal system. And in the meantime, we really learned that there are certain bacteria species, certain microbiota that are over or under represented...
I think that’s a very interesting and emerging topic. Although, already James Parkinson, who described initially the disease, found that there are impairments in the intestines, the bowel movements are reduced, there are swelling problems. So that also hints to something that is related to the gastrointestinal system. And in the meantime, we really learned that there are certain bacteria species, certain microbiota that are over or under represented. And this kind of represents a fingerprint of Parkinson’s disease that was very robust across different studies, even applying different technologies. And that’s something to me indicating then, and now we have to see what’s a hen or the egg, but that at least this could be a biomarker and even, and that’s our hypothesis, could contribute to the pathogenesis.
Yeah, what was interesting to see is that also in our Luxembourg Parkinson’s study, we could reproduce a specific fingerprint for Parkinson’s disease, which is a little bit to go into the detail an increase in Akkermansia species and a reduction in Prevotella species that was also described by others previously. What we could see is that the different microbiota found in Parkinson’s disease let us predict by a metabolic modeling also compounds that are secreted by these microbiota. And this indicates alterations of sulfur metabolism that in itself contributes to a vicious cycle and adds to development of secondary bile acids. And here we have a mechanism how toxicity could be mediated also in Parkinson’s disease.
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Disclosures
RK has received research grants from Fonds National de Recherche de Luxembourg (FNR) as Coordinator of the National Centre for Excellence in Research on Parkinson’s disease (NCER-PD), Coordinator of the Study on COvid-19 National survey for assessing VIral spread by Non-affected CarriErs (CON-VINCE) and from the German Research Council (DFG; KR2119/8-1), the Michael J Fox Foundation, the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation program (WIDESPREAD; CENTRE-PD; grant agreement no. 692320). RK received as well as speaker’s honoraria and/or travel grants from Abbvie, Zambon and Medtronic and he participated as PI or site-PI for industry sponsored clinical trials without receiving honoraria.
