New Gut-Brain Parkinson’s Disease Consortium Studies Connection Between the Gut Microbiome and Parkinson's Disease

By Hannah Webster

This story comes from the Fall 2024 edition of Coming Down The Pipeline: What's new & next at the DCRI, and the people making it happen sent out on December 11, 2024. Learn more about the DCRI on their website.


More than half of patients who develop Parkinson’s Disease (PD) have a history of complaints related to the gastrointestinal (GI) system, such as chronic nausea or constipation.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a multisystem disorder characterized by both motor and non-motor dysfunctions. While the neurologic features of PD often lead to the diagnosis, symptoms are not limited to motor dysfunction. GI issues may present years before motor symptoms, causing researchers to hypothesize that the gut plays a key, but undefined, role in PD.

The NIH launched the Gut-Brain Communication in Parkinson’s Disease Consortium (GBPDC) to answer questions about the role of the GI tract in PD. The consortium is composed of observational studies to better understand the mechanisms that connect the gut and brain in PD.

The DCRI will serve as the Coordinating and Data Management Center (CDMC) for the consortium. Lisa Wruck, PhD; Laurie Sanders, PhD; and Kristin Newby, MD serve as the principal investigators, and Melanie Kelly, MPH serves as the program director.

“This is such an exciting opportunity for the DCRI to contribute to research into GI symptoms and changes in gut-brain communication in patients with PD,” Sanders said. “This research will advance and accelerate our understanding of the potential role of the GI tract in the initiation, pathogenesis and progression of PD, with a goal to ultimately improve patient diagnosis, care, and outcomes.”

The team will develop a master protocol, coordinate participant enrollment, manage consortium-wide meetings and activities, provide statistical and computational analysis support, and establish a central data hub.

“We have such rich experience at the DCRI building these research consortiums, so we have so much knowledge to draw from,” Wruck said. “We are building on the work of teams that have come before us, like ECHO and RADx-UP.”

The CDMC will also establish a biorepository through the OneDukebio Integrated Biospecimen Network (ODIN) of participant samples to be used in etiology and pathogenesis studies.

“The state-of-the-art centralized biorepository at Duke follows biobanking best practices and ensures the integrity of specimens,” Newby explained. “The biorepository is such a valuable asset to this research, allowing researchers to draw the important conclusions that will advance our understanding of PD.”

“Common Data Elements (CDE) related to the brain and PD are well established, but those established CDEs are not related to the gut,” Wruck said. “There is an opportunity for us to develop CDEs that would be broadly useful to the research community.”

Read more in this Parkinson's News Today article.

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