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Gut pathology in Parkinsons Disease

The function of the gut and pathology of evidence is gaining credibility.

Braak’s staging scheme is that the areas of the nervous system littered with Lewy bodies at the earliest stages of disease could account for the non-motor symptoms. The staging system, , “has drawn attention to the damage in other transmitter systems—in other words, apart from and before the nigrostriatal system. In addition, it can serve as a framework for relating the pathology in other parts of the nervous system (gastrointestinal tract, spinal cord, and so on) to that in the brain.”

The focus on the substantia nigra faces challenge, most PD patients have additional, non-motor symptoms, and PD is coming to be understood as a much broader disease.

Chronic constipation, loss of smell, and REM sleep disorders often occur before the motor

problems (O’Sullivan et al., 2008 and ARF related news story). A large epidemiological

study, the Honolulu-Asia Aging Study, showed that men who reported less frequent

bowel movements had a significantly higher risk of developing PD within the next 24

years (Abbott et al., 2001; Abbott et al., 2003).

One of the attractive features of Braak’s staging scheme is that the areas of the nervous system littered with Lewy bodies at the earliest stages of disease could account for these non-motor symptoms. The staging system, wrote Braak in an e-mail “has drawn attention to the damage in other transmitter systems—in other words, apart from and before the nigrostriatal system. In addition, it can serve as a framework for relating the pathology in other parts of the nervous system (gastrointestinal tract, spinal cord, and so on) to that in the brain.”

Read on————–

http://www.alzforum.org/new/pdf/ParkinsonsSeries.pdf

January 13, 2012 Posted by admin | Anatomy-gut | gut | Leave a Comment