Keep ‘healthy’ The bacteria we have in the intestine It is more important than we can think. During the last decade there are many voices that have arisen pointing to the relationship between our microbiota and other parts of our body. Now, a study has given light on the amazing connection that exists between digestive and metabolic health and the risk of developing diseases neurodegenerative as Alzheimer’s either Parkinson.
A study that has used data of all kinds. Research, published in Science Advances, Not only identifies specific disorders that increase the risk of these diseases, but also demonstrates that these signals can be detected up to 15 years before neurological diagnosis, opening a new and promising via for Early detection and prevention.
The work, which analyzed the clinical, genetic and proteomic data of hundreds of thousands of biobancos such as the UK Biobank, Finngen and Sail, is the most extensive of its kind and reinforces the importance of called intestine-corebro axisthe complex communication network that connects our digestive system with the central nervous.
Digestive disorders and Alzheimer’s. The researchers analyzed the association of 155 digestive, endocrine, metabolic and nutritional disorders with the future risk of Alzheimer and Parkinson. The results are revealing. For Alzheimer’s, it was found that previous diagnoses of the following conditions significantly increased the risk:
- Gastritis and duodenitis
- Esophageal reflux disease (esophagitis)
- Diabetes (all types)
- Vitamin D deficiency
- Electrolyte disorders and acid-base balance
- Functional intestinal disorders (such as irritable intestine syndrome)
There are also warning signs for Parkinson. A disease that is also neurodegenerative and is iconicly characterized with a constant tremor, among many other signs. In this case, the pathologies that could be an alert sign to generate this disease were:
- Dyspepsia (indigestion)
- Diabetes (dependent and independent of insulin)
- Functional intestinal disorders
The importance of being a stratified study. This means that the data were divided into windows from 1 to 5, 5 to 10 and 10 to 15 years before diagnosis. This is something really important, since researchers could confirm the theory that the increase in risk is not something that happens just after the appearance of the first neurological symptoms, but it is a process that is created over more than a decade.
For example, a diagnosis of non -insulin -dependent diabetes between 10 and 15 years before was associated with a 71% greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
The importance of an early diagnosis. And it is that diagnosing a neurodegenerative disease so in advance is the best asset we have to avoid its most unwanted effects. Right now Alzheimer is an incurable disease, but There are drugs that stop the disease. From here lies the importance of having an early diagnosis, since the sooner the timely treatment begins, the more difficult it will be to progress to the worst stages.
It also has protection functions. Curiously, it has been seen that a hemorrhoid diagnosis was associated with a lower risk of Alzheimer’s. The authors speculate that this could be due to a survival bias: the serious conditions that are sometimes associated with hemorrhoids could have a higher mortality rate, which would reduce the probability that these patients live enough to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Genetics or lifestyle? One of the most counterintuitive findings in the study has to do with genetics. The researchers calculated the polygenic risk scores (PRS), which is a measure of genetic predisposition to a disease, and compared them.
They discovered that patients who developed Alzheimer’s or Parkinson and also had one of these digestive or metabolic disorders, on average, had a lower genetic risk score than those who developed the neurological disease in isolation.
Inheritance does not matter so much. These results can translate into that the person with intestinal comorbidity, environmental and lifestyle factors They play a much more decisive role in the development of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s than the genetic inheritance itself.
It is the evidence that we needed to reinforce the idea that the disease is not only in our genetic material, but that the environment and our decisions can intervene in its development.
Towards a multimodal predictive model. The true qualitative leap of the study is the creation of a multimodal prediction model. Instead of based on a single type of data, scientists combined four pillars of information: clinical, genetic, proteomic data (with the analysis of 1,463 biomarkers) and demographic.
The result was a model with a predictive capacity much higher than that of any individual paradigm. For Alzheimer’s, the combined model reached a 0.90 precision (AUC), a very high level for this type of predictions. It is interesting to note that the model that excluded clinical data, but maintained genetics, proteomics and demography, obtained almost identical precision (0.89), which suggests that blood biomarkers already capture much of the biological information that underlies clinical diagnoses.
A diagnosis based on an analytical. Among the most influential biomarkers were found GLIAL FIBRARRARARY ACID PREIIN (GFAP) and the light chain neurofilament (NFL), both known as indicators of neuronal damage, which validates the biological robustness of the model.
This approach demonstrates that the integration of different “omics” (genomic, proteomic) with clinical data is the way to follow for truly early and personalized detection, long before cognitive symptoms or irreversible motors appear. The team has even developed an interactive web platform so that other researchers can explore the results, promoting transparency and reproducibility.
Images | Weermeijer Robina Julien Tromeur
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