Good news!
However, the new study only seems to confirm the linkage, but does not explain the it. Apparently, more studying needs to be done!
There might be a flaw in this study: As healthy subjects the researchers selected the health spouses of PD patients. Well that certainly raises some questions given the intimate relationship between patient and spouse.
"... Clumped alpha-syn has also been found in the gut, and it’s thought that a gut-based pathogen may cause the aggregation, which then travels to the brain.
In an effort to better understand what causes PD, researchers ... have closely examined the role that a species of bacteria – Desulfovibrio (DSV) – might play.
They’d looked at the link between DSV and PD in 2021 when they found the bacteria were more prevalent in people with the disease. They also found that, in people with PD, having more of these bacteria correlated with the severity of symptoms seen.
However, in the previous study, the way DSV contributed to the development of PD was not explored. Now, the researchers turned to science’s favorite worm, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), to examine whether DSV strains contributed to alpha-syn aggregation and PD. ..."
"... The study also found that Desulfovibrio strains isolated from healthy individuals do not cause α-synuclein aggregation to the same degree. In contrast, the aggregates caused by the Desulfovibrio strains in patients with Parkinson’s diseases were also larger. ..."
From the abstract:
"Introduction: The aggregation of the neuronal protein alpha-synuclein (alpha-syn) is a key feature in the pathology of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Alpha-syn aggregation has been suggested to be induced in the gut cells by pathogenic gut microbes such as Desulfovibrio bacteria, which has been shown to be associated with PD. This study aimed to investigate whether Desulfovibrio bacteria induce alpha-syn aggregation.
Methods: Fecal samples of ten PD patients and their healthy spouses were collected for molecular detection of Desulfovibrio species, followed by bacterial isolation. Isolated Desulfovibrio strains were used as diets to feed Caenorhabditis elegans nematodes which overexpress human alpha-syn fused with yellow fluorescence protein. Curli-producing Escherichia coli MC4100, which has been shown to facilitate alpha-syn aggregation in animal models, was used as a control bacterial strain, and E. coli LSR11, incapable of producing curli, was used as another control strain. The head sections of the worms were imaged using confocal microscopy. ...
Results and Discussion: Statistical analysis revealed that worms fed Desulfovibrio bacteria from PD patients harbored significantly more (P<0.001, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U test) and larger alpha-syn aggregates (P<0.001) than worms fed Desulfovibrio bacteria from healthy individuals or worms fed E. coli strains. In addition, during similar follow-up time, worms fed Desulfovibrio strains from PD patients died in significantly higher quantities than worms fed E. coli LSR11 bacteria (P<0.01). These results suggest that Desulfovibrio bacteria contribute to PD development by inducing alpha-syn aggregation."
Researchers discover a potential cause of Parkinson’s disease Researchers at the University of Helsinki have demonstrated that certain strains of Desulfovibrio bacteria are the likely cause of Parkinson’s disease in most cases. The study enables the screening of the carriers of Desulfovibrio strains and the removal of the bacteria from the gut.
Desulfovibrio bacteria enhance alpha-synuclein aggregation in a Caenorhabditis elegans model of Parkinson’s disease (open access)
Figure 1 Head section of C. elegans worms fed with E. coli controls and Desulfovibrio bacteria from patients with Parkinson’s disease and healthy individuals.
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