Grant: Project Grant

In recent years, more and more evidence has accumulated in support of the idea that the gut and the bacteria within it can influence susceptibility to a wide range of diseases, including ones not classically thought of as intestinal diseases. For example, a growing body of evidence now supports the idea that important triggers of Parkinson's disease, a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement, occur in the gut. We have recently shown, in a mouse model with a mutation in a Parkinson's Disease-associated gene, that Parkinson's Disease symptoms develop only after infection with bacteria that cause intestinal inflammation and short-term diarrheal disease. This is consistent with new lines of evidence from other studies which have recently uncovered an association between intestinal inflammation and Parkinson's Disease. For example, people suffering from inflammatory bowel disease are much more likely to develop Parkinson's Disease. Our discovery now provides us with a unique system to investigate exactly how events in the intestine can influence the development of Parkinson's Disease. Using this model we can now study in more detail the specifics of how intestinal bacteria are involved in this process, which of the intestinal responses to the infection are important, and how the signals in the gut get relayed to the brain. We anticipate that our studies may lead to the new ways to detect or prevent Parkinson's Disease early on in its development and before any of the motor symptoms occur.