The Role of Gut Microbiota in the Progression of Parkinson’s Disease and the Mechanism of Intervention by Traditional Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common degenerative disease of the nervous system that seriously affects the quality of life of the patients. The pathogenesis of PD is not yet fully clear. Previous studies have confirmed that patients with PD exhibit obvious gut microbiota imbalance, while intervention of PD by regulating the gut microbiota has become an important approach to the prevention and treatment of this disease. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been shown to be safe and effective in treating PD. It has the advantages of affecting multiple targets. Studies have shown TCM can regulate gut microbiota. However, the specific mechanism of action is still unclear. Therefore, this article will mainly discuss the association of the alteration of the gut microbiota and the incidence of PD, the advantages of TCM in treating PD, and the mechanism of regulating gut microbiota by TCM to treat PD. It will clarify the target and mechanism of TCM treating PD by acting gut microbiota and provided a novel methodology for the prevention and treatment of PD.

Keywords:

• Parkinson’s disease
• gut microbiota
• traditional Chinese medicine
• pathogenesis

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81573899), The Youth Science Fund Project of National Natural Science Fund of China (No.82104965), Shanghai Biomedical Science Technology Support Project (No.20S21901700) and Shanghai Science and Technology Project (NO.21DZ2271000).

Disclosure

The authors of this study declare that they have no conflict of interest.