Ask any neurologist: Parkinson's disease is a brain disorder. The conspicuous symptoms of Parkinson's disease—uncontrollable tremors, slowed down motions, and the feeling that one's feet are stuck to the ground—all stem from the loss of neurons in a region of the brain that helps control movement.
But many researchers believe that the neurodegenerative disorder may get started far away from the brain—in the gut—and years before the first neurological signs appear.
"If this is the beginning of Parkinson's in many people, we could potentially identify who has the disease before it ever reaches the brain and hopefully stop it in its tracks," Sulzer says. The new findings were published Aug. 18 inThe gut-first theory of Parkinson's, originally proposed 20 years ago, started to intrigue Sulzer after his own research pointed toward the role of an autoimmune response in Parkinson's.
The gut was an intriguing possibility because it contains the same neurons and because most Parkinson's patients experience constipation years before brain symptoms emerge and the disease is diagnosed. To pursue this hypothesis, Sulzer teamed up with Agalliu, a neuroimmunologist with expertise in mouse models of another neurological disorder that has autoimmune features.
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