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University of Ghent Belgium Research Team Finds Stool Transplants Improve Motor Symptoms in Early-stage Parkinson’s Disease Patients

Jun 12, 2024 | International Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Resources, Laboratory Testing, Precision Medicine

Findings could lead to clinical laboratory tests that help physicians identify microbes lacking in the microbiomes of their Parkinson patients

Microbiologists and clinical laboratory scientists know that gut microbiome can be involved in the development of Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder that affects the nervous system due to damage caused to nerve cells in the brain. There is no cure for the illness. But a new treatment developed by researchers at the VIB Center for Inflammation Research at the University of Ghent in Belgium, may help to alleviate the symptoms.

During a clinical trial, VIB Center for Inflammation Research (VIB-IRC) scientists discovered that fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), also known as a stool transplant, can improve motor skills in some Parkinson’s patients, according to Neuroscience News.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) develops when a protein called alpha-synuclein misfolds and forms into bundled clusters damaging nerve cells in the brain that produce dopamine. These formations, which are believed to appear in the gastrointestinal wall in the early stages of PD, then reach the brain via the vagus nerve leading to typical PD symptoms in patients.

“Dopaminergic medication, deep brain stimulation, and speech and occupational therapy are some of the treatments currently available to people with Parkinson’s disease, but researchers are constantly on the lookout for more and better treatments,” Medical News Today reported.

The scientists published their findings in eClinicalMedicine titled, “Safety and Efficacy of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Patients with Mild to Moderate Parkinson’s Disease (GUT-PARFECT): A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized, Phase 2 Trial.”

“Our study provides promising hints that FMT can be a valuable new treatment for Parkinson’s disease,” Roosmarijn Vandenbroucke, PhD (above), Principal Investigator, VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research and full professor, UGent Department of Biomedical molecular biology, Faculty of Sciences, told Neuroscience News. “More research is needed, but it offers a potentially safe, effective, and cost-effective way to improve symptoms and quality of life for millions of people with Parkinson’s disease worldwide.” Clinical laboratories will likely be involved in identifying the best microbes for the FMT treatments. (Photo copyright: University of Ghent.)

Correlation between Gut Microbiome and Neurogenerative Disease

To perform their clinical study—referred to as GUT-PARFECT—the IRC researchers first recruited patients with early-stage PD and healthy donors who provided stool samples to the Ghent Stool Bank. The PD patients received the healthy stool via a tube inserted into the nose which led directly into the small intestine.

The FMT procedures were performed on 46 patients with PD between December 2020 and December 2021. The participants in this group ranged in ages from 50 to 65. There were 24 PD patients in the placebo group, and a total of 22 donors provided the healthy stool. Clinical evaluations were performed at baseline, three, six, and 12 months.

After 12 months, the group that received the transplants showed a reduction in symptoms compared to the placebo group. Their motor score on the Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) improved by a mean of 5.8 points. The improvement registered on the same scale for the placebo group was 2.7 points.

Developed in the 1980s, the MDS-UPDRS is a scale utilized to evaluate various aspects of PD by measuring patient responses via a questionnaire rating several issues (such as cognitive impairment, apathy, depression, and anxiousness) common in PD patients from normal to severe. It is divided into four parts:

  • Part I: Non-motor experiences of daily living.
  • Part II: Motor experiences of daily living.
  • Part III: Motor examination.
  • Part IV: Motor complications.

During the final six months of the research, the improvement in motor symptoms became even greater. To the VIB-IRC researchers this implied that an FMT may have long-lasting effects on PD patients. The FMT study group also experienced less constipation, a condition that can be bothersome for some PD patients.

“Our results are really encouraging!” said the study’s first author, Arnout Bruggeman, MD, PhD student, VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, in a UGent News release. “After twelve months, participants who received the healthy donor stool transplant showed a significant improvement in their motor score, the most important measure for Parkinson’s symptoms.”

Findings Could Lead to Other Targeted Therapies for PD

The VIB-IRC researchers believe there is a correlation between the gut microbiome and Parkinson’s disease.

“Our findings suggested a single FMT induced mild, but long-lasting beneficial effects on motor symptoms in patients with early-stage PD. These findings highlight the potential of modulating the gut microbiome as a therapeutic approach and warrant a further exploration of FMT in larger cohorts of patients with PD in various disease stages,” the IRC researchers wrote in eClinicalMedicine.  

“Our next step is to obtain funding to determine which bacteria have a positive influence. This could lead to the development of a ‘bacterial pill’ or other targeted therapy that could replace FMT in the future,” Debby Laukens, PhD, Associate Professor, Ghent University, told Neuroscience News.

According to the Parkinson’s Foundation website, nearly one million people in the US live with PD. It is second only to Alzheimer’s disease in the category of neurodegenerative diseases.

More research and studies are needed before the VIB-IRC’s stool transplant treatment can be used in clinical care. As researchers learn more about which specific strains of bacteria are doing the beneficial work in PD patients, that data could eventually lead to clinical laboratory tests performed to help physicians identify which microbes are lacking in the microbiomes of their PD patients, and if fecal transplants could help those patients.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Fecal Bacteria Transplant May Improve Parkinson’s Symptoms

Safety and Efficacy of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation in Patients with Mild to Moderate Parkinson’s Disease (GUT-PARFECT): A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Randomized, Phase 2 Trial

Stool Transplantation Shows Promise For Parkinson’s Disease

Fecal Microbiota Transplant Eases Parkinson’s Symptoms in Trial

Stool Transplant Could Improve Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease

In Conversation: Why Parkinson’s Research is Zooming in on the Gut

Pathologists at Michigan Health Find Evidence That COVID-19 Survivors Who Continue to Experience Respiratory Symptoms May Have Had Lung Disease Prior to Being Exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus

Feb 2, 2022 | Digital Pathology, Laboratory News, Laboratory Pathology, Laboratory Testing, Precision Medicine

These findings hint at the role of pre-existing conditions in raising the risk of an individual having a severe case of COVID-19 once infected

At the University of Michigan, a team of pathologists have been researching the factors that might cause some patients infected by SARS-CoV-2 to suffer persistent respiratory problems, often described as “long COVID.” They have identified factors that place some individuals at higher risk for these problems.

Little is known about how the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus affects the body long-term. Millions of people who have survived COVID-19 infections are living with chronic symptoms, including persistent respiratory problems such as shortness of breath. However, until now, it was not clear what may be causing these symptoms in some people but not others, even after the coronavirus has completely cleared their bodies.

Now, anatomic pathologists at Michigan Medicine, formerly the University of Michigan Health, believe they may have discovered what is causing ongoing respiratory problems in some patients who have recovered from the COVID-19 infection—pre-existing conditions.

The researchers examined lung biopsies from COVID-19 patients who continued to experience lingering symptoms. They discovered in some individuals lung damage that was present prior to contracting the virus.

Jeffrey Myers, MD

“Some of the early publications and popular press around long COVID has implied or assumed that once you had COVID, everything that happens next is COVID-related,” said anatomic pathologist and senior author of the study Jeffrey Myers, MD (above), Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs and Quality at Michigan Medicine, in a news release. “Of course, that might or might not be true,” he added. (Photo copyright: University of Michigan.)

The research team analyzed lung biopsies from 18 COVID-19 survivors who were still experiencing respiratory symptoms or had abnormal computed tomography (CT) scans after the virus was no longer present in their bodies. The researchers found ground glass opacities on the radiological scans of 14 of those patients.

According to the news release, this finding indicates there were “areas of the lungs that appear as a cloudy gray color as opposed to the dark color of normal air-filled lungs, on a chest X-ray or CT scan.”

The biopsies exhibited evidence of pre-existing lung scarring and proof of diffuse alveolar damage, which is typically seen in patients with acute respiratory illnesses. Only five of the patients examined in the study were known to have lung disease prior to their COVID-19 diagnoses.

The researchers found that the most common condition present in these 18 patients was usual interstitial pneumonia (UIP). This condition, also known clinically as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), is a common form of pulmonary fibrosis that is characterized by progressive scarring and stiffening of both lungs.

“We were seeing a lot of UIP, which isn’t the pattern we tend to associate with acute lung injury,” said Kristine Konopka, MD, Clinical Associate Professor at Michigan Medicine and lead author of the study, in the news release. “So, we think these are patients who had lung disease prior to COVID and maybe they just weren’t being followed by primary care physicians. They then had COVID, are still sick, and their UIP is finally being picked up.”

Could Patients Have Lung Disease and Not Know it?

“The notion,” Myers noted in the news release, “that a person could have chronic lung damage and not know it was unheard of until relatively recently.” He also explained that UIP/IPF is a progressive disease that gets worse with time and that an infection like COVID-19 can accelerate the illness to a more serious condition known as an acute exacerbation of IPF, which can lead to death.

“SARS-CoV-2 comes along and does to the lung, from a pathology perspective, exactly what happens with an acute exacerbation,” Myers said.

The researchers also stated that it’s impossible to determine for certain whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus caused the UIP/IPF without the existence of full clinical histories of the patients prior to their COVID-19 diagnoses. They hope their research will motivate clinicians to be cautious before automatically attributing respiratory symptoms to long COVID in survivors of the virus. It is possible that the lung damage was present prior to the coronavirus.

“You shouldn’t make assumptions but [instead] ask the right questions, the first of which would be ‘I wonder if this is really COVID?’ What you do after that depends on the answer to that question,” he added.

The Michigan Medicine researchers published their findings in the journal eClinicalMedicine, titled, “Usual Interstitial Pneumonia Is the Most Common Finding in Surgical Lung Biopsies from Patients with Persistent Interstitial Lung Disease Following Infection with SARS-CoV-2.”

This research is an example of how pathologists can add insight and value into the deeper understanding of the processes involved in specific diseases. Dark Daily invites any of our readers who are aware of other pathologist-authored studies or published papers about COVID-19 to alert us to the availability of those works.

—JP Schlingman

Related Information:

Pathologists Find Evidence of Pre-existing Chronic Lung Disease in People with Long COVID

Usual Interstitial Pneumonia is the Most Common Finding in Surgical Lung Biopsies from Patients with Persistent Interstitial Ling Disease Following Infection with SARS-CoV-2

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