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09.01.2019 12:50:18
Little is still known about the exact causes of Parkinson's disease. Now scientists are confident that the connection of the stomach and brain through the vagus nerve contributes to the emergence of neurodegenerative diseases.
Compared to the general population, people with Parkinson's disease are twice as likely to suffer from constipation and sleep disorders before they are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Such atypical symptoms often even over the years precede the appearance of characteristic tremor and other motility disorders. A possible link between the brain and the intestines, researchers of Parkinson's disease have long suggested. Now Swedish researchers have been able to provide evidence of this.
First, with the help of a national data bank on health, scientists searched for all patients who had a so-called vagotomy between 1970 and 2010. During this operation in the past, individual branches or the entire vagus nerve were surgically cut off. Thus, the production of gastric juice had to be reduced, thereby treating a stomach ulcer as well as a duodenal ulcer. Now this type of gastric ulcer therapy is no longer used.
Scientists selected a total of 9430 patients who underwent such an operation. Of these, 101 patients had Parkinson's disease, which corresponds to 1.07%. For comparison, among the entire population, 1.28% of cases of Parkinson's disease were recorded. The effect was even more pronounced when scientists concentrated on patients who completely cut the vagus nerve. In such cases, the risk of developing Parkinson's disease is 22% lower than that of the general population. If the intervention was performed at least five years ago or more, the risk of Parkinson's disease decreased by 41%.
With these results, scientists confirm not only the study of the Danish working group, but partly the so-called peripheral onset hypothesis, according to which Parkinson's disease at least partially begins to develop in the gastrointestinal tract. The key role is played by abnormal protein molecules called alpha synuclein. They accumulate in the brain suffering from Parkinson's disease. According to the hypothesis, alpha-synucleins under the influence of toxins can occur in the nervous system of the gastrointestinal tract. From there, the protein molecules, as if by stairs, ascend along the vagus nerve and its branches to the brain.
"A new study confirms the hypothesis that Parkinson's disease occurs in the stomach and spreads along the nerve paths to the brain," says Professor Daniela Berg, a member of the German Society of Neurology. “Even if at the moment we cannot offer any new treatment, a more complete understanding of the cell destruction process in the long run will certainly help patients,” says Berg, head of the neurology department of the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital at Campus Kiel.
