Diagnostic potential of gut microbiota in Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Background. Nowadays many efforts are taken in searching for Parkinson’s disease biomarkers, especially for an early recognition of the disease. The gut microbiota is one of the potential sources of biomarkers, changes in the composition of which in PD are actively studied.The aim of this study is to identify microbiota biomarkers in the Parkinson’s disease with an estimated accuracy of the diagnostics, including differential diagnostics, relative to other neurological diseases for patients of the Russian population.Material and methods. One hundred ninety-two metagenomics profiles from patients with Parkinson’s disease (n = 93), people with other neurological diagnoses (n = 33), and healthy controls (n = 66) were included in this study. These profiles were obtained with amplicon sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Classifying models were made using the naive Bayes classifier, the artificial neural network, support vector machine, generalized linear model, and partial least squares regression.As a result we established that an optimal classification by the composition of the gut microbiota on the validation sample (sensitivity 91.30%, specificity 91.67% at 91.49% accuracy) amid patients was demonstrated with a naive Bayes classifier using the representation of the following genera as predictors: Christensenella, Methanobrevibacter, Leuconostoc, Enterococcus, Catabacter, Desulfovibrio, Sphingomonas, Yokenella, Atopobium, Fusicatenibacter, Cloacibacillus, Bulleidia, Acetanaerobacterium, and Staphylococcus.Conclusions. Information of the gut microbiota taxonomic composition may be used in differential diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.

Can the gut be the missing piece in uncovering PD pathogenesis?

“…The GI involvement in PD led several groups to analyze the composition of gut microbiota in PD and so far, 11 studies have been published (Table 1) [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Despite differences in terms of patient recruitment (number and selection criteria) and methods of analysis (molecular biology, bioinformatics and statistics), all these studies identified changes in the composition of the gut microbiota in PD (Table 1).…”

“…Despite differences in terms of patient recruitment (number and selection criteria) and methods of analysis (molecular biology, bioinformatics and statistics), all these studies identified changes in the composition of the gut microbiota in PD (Table 1). Compared to the control population, an increase of Akkermansia (6 studies) [20][21][22][23][24][25] and Lactobacillus bacteria (5 studies) [20,[25][26][27][28] as well as a decrease of Prevotella bacteria (6 studies) [20,[22][23][24]26,27] was observed in PD patients. The other concordant results between the studies were the lower abundance of Faecalibacterium (4 studies) [22,24,27,29] and Blautia (3 studies) [21,24,29] and an increase in the number of Bifidobacterium (3 studies) [22,24,27].…”

“…Compared to the control population, an increase of Akkermansia (6 studies) [20][21][22][23][24][25] and Lactobacillus bacteria (5 studies) [20,[25][26][27][28] as well as a decrease of Prevotella bacteria (6 studies) [20,[22][23][24]26,27] was observed in PD patients. The other concordant results between the studies were the lower abundance of Faecalibacterium (4 studies) [22,24,27,29] and Blautia (3 studies) [21,24,29] and an increase in the number of Bifidobacterium (3 studies) [22,24,27]. It is unlikely that these changes were the sole consequence of PD treatment as they were also observed in early disease stage L-DOPA-naïve PD patients [23,25].…”