Parkinson’s disease may reach the brain from the gut through the vagus nerve, according to a theory set out by Swedish researchers last night.
Setting out their theory in Neurology, the researchers report relatively low rates of Parkinson’s disease among patients who had truncal vagotomy, leading to the full severance of the vagus nerve.
The researchers admit "much more" research is needed and that there may well be multiple causes of the disease.
But the point to research that has identified proteins linked to the disease in the gut.
For their study they compared some 9,430 vagotomy patients with 377,000 others identified in Swedish national databases over a 40-year period.
They report that 19 patients who underwent truncal vagotomy developed Parkinson’s disease – 0.78% of the total.
This compared with a 1.28% rate of disease among the control group. Some 1.08% of patients who underwent selective vagotomy – the more common procedure – developed Parkinson’s disease.
Researcher Bojing Liu, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, said: “These results provide preliminary evidence that Parkinson’s disease may start in the gut.
“Other evidence for this hypothesis is that people with Parkinson’s disease often have gastrointestinal problems such as constipation, that can start decades before they develop the disease.
"In addition, other studies have shown that people who will later develop Parkinson’s disease have a protein believed to play a key role in Parkinson’s disease in their gut.”
Neurology 26 April 2017
Leave a Reply