Parkinsons disease begins in the stomach

A new registry study from Department of Clinical Epidemiology shows that Parkinson’s disease most likely begins in the gastrointestinal tract. The study involves 15,000 patients who had their vagus nerve cut through as treatment of ulcer in the period 1970 through 1995. The study shows that the risk of getting Parkinson’s was halved in these patients 20 years later. Post.doc. Elisabeth Svensson, who conducted the study, explains that patients whose vagus nerve was not severed completely were not protected against Parkinson’s.

The results thus indicate that Parkinson’s spreads from the gastrointestinal area to the brain via the vagus nerve. The study is the first to examine and shows such an association. The results have recently been published in the international journal Annals of Neurology.