If you are afflicted by constipation, it is probably a signal of early Parkinson’s disease.

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, have hypothesized that constipation – a common even though not typically mentioned non-motor symptom of Parkinson’s – could predate a diagnosis of the neurological disorder by up to twenty years.
That’s important due to the fact there are presently no treatments able to prevent the development of Parkinson’s. However, if it is recognized early enough, scientists hope that certain treatments which have proved unsuccessful afterward in the disease would possibly work to at earlier degrees.

Parkinson’s includes the accumulation of tiny deposits of protein waste inside mind cells referred to as Lewy bodies (named after Dr. Friedrich Lewy who first found them in 1912). Lewy body buildup seems to be connected with particular non-motor signs of Parkinson’s including anxiety, sleep disorders, and the lack of sense of smell.

Scientists have proposed that Lewy bodies kill a number of the brain cells that manage the wholesome functioning of various components of the body, consisting of the gastrointestinal tract.

Because Lewy bodies are clinically inaccessible and can’t be studied immediately in the brain, scientists have needed to search for related signs – like constipation. Lewy bodies may also lurk withinside the brain for many years earlier than diagnosis.

The Hebrew University group, led by Prof. Joshua Goldberg of the Department of Medical Neurobiology, over-expressed a protein referred to as alpha-synuclein withinside the brain cells of laboratory mice. Alpha-synuclein controls gastrointestinal motility; it’s also the main constituent of Lewy bodies.
The end result was that the over-expression of the protein caused the mice brain cells to decrease and their electrical activity to slow down, immediately affecting the physiological properties that result in constipation. The researchers concluded that it is probably that this is also the technique that takes place in people in the early levels of Parkinson’s disease.

“As far as we know, that is the primary time that everybody has defined a causal chain of events connecting among how alpha-synuclein protein influences brain cells and the early signs that we’ve long known predate this sickness,” Goldberg says.

While the studies continue to be hypothetical for people, Goldberg is enthusiastic.

“Consider a 55-to 60-year-old patient affected by constipation,” he notes. “We may also one day design a test primarily based totally at the neural changes we found to determine whether or not there’s a neural factor at play that can hint to Parkinson’s… someday in the future, we’re assured that we can be capable of perceiving a whole lot of biomarkers – consisting of physiological ones, just like the one we propose – so that it will permit us to definitively diagnose the disease far earlier than we’re presently able.”

Goldberg worked with a group of researchers at the Hebrew University which includes Dr. Wei-Hua Chiu, Prof. Menachem Hanani, Prof. Rami Yaka, Dr. Danny Ben Zvi, and Dr. Hadar Arien-Zakay.
The outcomes had been posted the remaining week withinside the magazine Science Advances.