Relationship Between Obesity, Parkinson’s Disease and Pesticides

The community of microorganisms living in the human gut, also called the gut microbiome, are known to play an important role in metabolic conditions such as obesity and neurological diseases including Parkinson's disease. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2022, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.

The human body hosts trillions of microbes, and the gut microbiome in particular, appears to play an important role in human health and disease through several mechanisms.

Advances in tools and techniques are allowing researchers to probe how interactions between our gut microbes, environment, and biology could impact a variety of health conditions.

Findings of the Conference:

• Early life adversity is associated with gut microbial imbalances, inflammation, and brain structure differences with BMI (1^✔ ✔Trusted Source
  Early life adversity predicts brain-gut alterations associated with increased stress and mood
  
  Go to source).
• Gut microbiota changes may contribute to abnormally folded proteins traveling from the colon to the brain, leading to the loss of dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson’s disease (2^✔ ✔Trusted Source
  Alpha-Synuclein Pathology and the Role of the Microbiota in Parkinson’s Disease
  
  Go to source).
• Oral pesticide exposure can alter dopamine pathways in the brain and lead to changes in the gut microbiome that are relevant to Parkinson’s disease (3^✔ ✔Trusted Source
  Low-dose oral pyrethroid exposure induces gastrointestinal dysfunction and alters nigrostriatal dopamine signaling pathways in mice
  
  Go to source).

“The neuroscience research presented illustrates that, when it comes to metabolic and neurological disorders, we cannot target only the brain. Everything that happens in the gut has an impact on the brain,” says Sonia Villapol, assistant professor of neurosurgery at Houston Methodist Research Institute, Texas, US, who studies brain recovery through the lens of peripheral mechanisms, including the gut microbiome.

“A better understanding of interactions between the gut and the brain will bring great opportunities for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases.”

Varied mechanisms link the microbes in the gut with the brain, making the gut microbiome an important player in some metabolic and neurological disorders.

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Clinical studies in humans and research with animal models are increasingly finding a role for the gut microbiome in health conditions including obesity and Parkinson’s disease.

Reference:

1. Early life adversity predicts brain-gut alterations associated with increased stress and mood - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8170500/)
2. Alpha-Synuclein Pathology and the Role of the Microbiota in Parkinson’s Disease - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6491838/)
3. Low-dose oral pyrethroid exposure induces gastrointestinal dysfunction and alters nigrostriatal dopamine signaling pathways in mice - (https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/abs/10.1289/isee.2021.P-066)

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Source-Medindia