Neurodegenerative disease and microbiota

Evidence suggests that intestinal microbiota,  especially in the case of dysbiosis, may affect the  progression of neurological diseases and may even lead  to the formation of the disease. It has been realized that  decreasing diversity in aging gut of the microbiota may  be an important factor in the development of  neurodegeneration. Neuroinflammation is one of the  major mechanisms that associate microbiota with agerelated  diseases. Intestinal microbiota; plays a key role  in the activation of microglia and it is suggested that  manipulation of intestinal microbiota, especially with short chain fatty acid producing bacteria, may modulate  neuroimmun activation (Westfall et al. 2017).  On the clinical and scientific level, most  neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease,  Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.  Disease related pathology may spread across the  nervous system in a self-propagative fashion.  Importantly, there is a strong bidirectional interaction  between gut microbiota and the central nervous system,  a connection recently termed the “microbiota-gut-brainaxis”  (Jiang et al. 2017; Houser and Tansey, 2017).  While the effects of the autonomic nervous system  on gut physiology have been known for a long time, we  are just beginning to understand that gut microbiota has  strong effects on CNS physiology as well. The vast  number of ways through which gut microbiota affects  the host shows intriguing overlaps with pathways  previously implicated in neurodegeneration. Although  evidence for involvement of microbiota in  neurodegenerative diseases is still very preliminary,  initial findings are extremely promising (Zhu et al.  2017).  This presentation will give an overview of recent  findings regarding the connections between gutmicrobiota  and neurodegenerative disorders and how  this may reshape our understanding of these diseases.