Parkinson's disease may sometimes start in the digestive tract and make its way to the brain, partly thanks to a chain reaction fueled by gut microbes, new research suggests.
The lower digestive tract hosts many microorganisms, collectively called the gut microbiome. In people with Parkinson's disease, the balance of microbes in the gut shifts, with certain families of bacteria gaining a foothold over others. One family is known as Enterobacteriaceae, which includes the well-known microbe E. coli.
