Abstract
Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) were often observed with gastrointestinal symptoms, which preceded the onset of motor symptoms. Neuropathology of PD has also been found in the enteric nervous system (ENS). Many studies have reported significant PD-related alterations of gut microbiota. This meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the differences of gut microbiota between patients with PD and healthy controls (HCs) across different geographical regions. We conducted a systematic online search for case-control studies detecting gut microbiota in patients with PD and HCs. Mean difference (MD) and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to access alterations in the abundance of certain microbiota families in PD. Fifteen case-control studies were included in this meta-analysis study. Our results showed significant lower abundance levels of Prevotellaceae (MD = −0.37, 95% CI = −0.62 to −0.11), Faecalibacterium (MD = −0.41, 95% CI: −0.57 to −0.24), and Lachnospiraceae (MD = −0.34, 95% CI = −0.59 to −0.09) in patients with PD compared to HCs. Significant higher abundance level of Bifidobacteriaceae (MD = 0.38, 95%; CI = 0.12 to 0.63), Ruminococcaceae (MD = 0.58, 95% CI = 0.07 to 1.10), Verrucomicrobiaceae (MD = 0.45, 95% CI = 0.21 to 0.69), and Christensenellaceae (MD = 0.20, 95% CI = 0.07 to 0.34) was also found in patients with PD. Thus, shared alterations of certain gut microbiota were detected in patients with PD across different geographical regions. These PD-related gut microbiota dysbiosis might lead to the impairment of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) producing process, lipid metabolism, immunoregulatory function, and intestinal permeability, which contribute to the pathogenesis of PD.
Highlights
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive, multisystem neurodegenerative movement disorder (Poewe et al, 2017)
Of the 24 records that were included in the systematic review, 14 studies were included in this meta-analysis after removing nine studies that were not able to provide quantitative data about gut microbiota abundance at the family level and one study that had unmatched age between two groups
We analyzed the alterations of the abundance of Prevotellaceae, Bifidobacteriaceae, Lactobacillaceae, Faecalibacterium, Ruminococcaceae, Verrucomicrobiaceae, Enterobacteriaceae, Bacteroidaceae, Christensenellaceae, and Lachnospiraceae in patients with PD compared to healthy controls (HCs) in the present study
Summary
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive, multisystem neurodegenerative movement disorder (Poewe et al, 2017). Patients with PD suffer from characteristic motor symptoms including resting tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, and gait abnormalities, as well as non-motor symptoms such as hyposmia, sleep disorders, depression, and gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms. The main neuropathological characteristics of PD are loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta and the presence of Lewy bodies (LBs) or Lewy neurites, which consist of the abnormal α-synuclein aggregates (Abeliovich and Gitler, 2016). Braak staging traced the course of pathology, stating that PD started when a pathogen enters the body via the nose or the GI system (Braak et al, 2003), leading to the formation of LBs and spreading from the enteric nervous system (ENS) to the central nervous system (CNS) through the vagus nerve (Rietdijk et al, 2017). The role of the “gutbrain axis” started drawing more attention in investigating the pathogenic mechanism of PD
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