Alterations of the Fecal Microbiome in Parkinson's Disease

In the course of Parkinson’s disease (PD), the enteric nervous system is probably the first structure being affected by alpha-synuclein pathology. Recent research has shown that there is an intense bidirectional interaction between gut microbiota and the brain via diverse pathways. We speculated that intestinal microbiota may be implicated in PD. We compared the fecal microbiomes of 72 PD patients and 72 control subjects by pyrosequencing the bacterial 16S rRNA gene.