Abstract
This study was conducted to explore the composition of the fecal microflora of Chinese Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, as well as to explore links between PD clinical features and antiparkinsonian medications on the gut microflora. Seventy-two PD cases [59 patients suffering from PD for >1 year (OPD) and 13 new PD (NPD) patients] were studied. Microflora communities in the feces of the patients and corresponding healthy controls (HCs) were examined using high-throughput Illumina MiSeq sequencing targeting the 16S rRNA gene. The gut microflora of OPD patients contained high levels of Rikenellaceae compared to corresponding HCs. In addition, significantly higher levels of Turicibacteraceae were found in the NPD group compared to the corresponding HCs. The genera Turicibacter and Prevotella were significantly correlated with the PD severity scores. Our findings that some fecal microflora were closely related to PD clinical characteristics may enhance our understanding of the pathogenesis and treatment of PD.
Highlights
Microflora is considered as an important part of our body
There were no significant differences between the Parkinson’s disease (PD) and healthy controls (HCs) groups in terms of body mass index (BMI), gender, or age
We analyzed the taxonomic composition of the metagenomic populations of the gut microflora samples from patients with PD compared to those from the HC group using Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA)
Summary
The human body is considered to harbor 10-fold more microbial cells than human cells, and these flora carry nearly 100 to 200 times more protein-coding genes than the human genome. Microflora can both be regulated by immune mechanisms and the human genome (Levy et al, 2015), as well as be determined by environmental conditions including nutrition and other host factors (Hanski et al, 2012). The human body’s symbiotic relationship with microflora, which includes a range of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi that colonize all of the vital organs of the body, plays pivotal roles in human health (Cote et al, 2015) including a relationship with metabolism and the cause of human diseases. The evidence is steadily increasing concerning the presence of an intense bidirectional interaction between intestinal microbes and the nervous system, their impact on brain activity and behavior, and the levels of neurotransmitter receptors and nerve agents (Bercik et al, 2011; Cryan and Dinan, 2012)
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