"The idea that alpha-synuclein can spread from the gut to the brain is very new, says Alice Chen-Plotkin, a clinician and Parkinson’s researcher at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. These new results and others have prompted scientists to start looking outside of the brain for the beginning stages of the disease, she says. “Increasingly, people are wondering if it starts earlier.”
Some evidence suggests that the gut is a good place to look. People with Parkinson’s disease often suffer from gut problems such as constipation. And in 2015, scientists reported that a group of Danish people who had their vagus nerves severed were less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease. Cut alpha-synuclein’s transit route from the gut to the brain, and the disease is less likely to take hold, that study hints."
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