Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes combined motor symptoms of tremors, slowness in movement, stiffness, abnormal posture and gait, loss of balance, and non-motor symptoms as well. It occurs when brain cells that produce dopamine, a chemical messenger that helps coordinate smooth and balanced muscle movements, become damaged and die. Despite advances toward understanding what causes Parkinson’s disease, there is still no cure. Current treatments mainly focus on managing symptoms rather than slowing disease progression.
In recent years, the explosion of interest in the so-called “gut-brain axis,” the link between microorganisms living in the digestive tract and the central nervous system, has led scientists to look for links between the gut microbiome and diseases of the nervous system like Parkinson’s. Researchers have already uncovered interesting connections between the gut and Alzheimer’s disease, depression and anxiety, and even macular degeneration in the retina.
Now, a new grant will help a team of researchers from the University of Chicago study the gut microbiome’s role in Parkinson’s disease as well. The five-year, $3.4M award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health, is part of a larger consortium created to collect data from patients, in hopes of developing treatments to slow or prevent the disease’s progression.
Professor Xiaoxi Zhuang, PhD (Neurobiology and Neurology) is one of the co-investigators.