Are SCFA good or bad?

[LAJ12345]

Are SCFA good or bad? This is a year old but interesting.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/294... or if that didn’t work try

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi...

[park_bear]

The SCFAs - short chain fatty acids - are produced by bacteria in the gut. It can be good or bad depending on which ones they are, which in turn depends upon the kind of bacteria. Your link references an opinion piece based on the following paper.

sciencedirect.com/science/a...

"Summary

The intestinal microbiota influence neurodevelopment, modulate behavior, and contribute to neurological disorders. However, a functional link between gut bacteria and neurodegenerative diseases remains unexplored. Synucleinopathies are characterized by aggregation of the protein α-synuclein (αSyn), often resulting in motor dysfunction as exemplified by Parkinson’s disease (PD). Using mice that overexpress αSyn, we report herein that gut microbiota are required for motor deficits, microglia activation, and αSyn pathology. Antibiotic treatment ameliorates, while microbial re-colonization promotes, pathophysiology in adult animals, suggesting that postnatal signaling between the gut and the brain modulates disease. Indeed, oral administration of specific microbial metabolites to germ-free mice promotes neuroinflammation and motor symptoms. Remarkably, colonization of αSyn-overexpressing mice with microbiota from PD-affected patients enhances physical impairments compared to microbiota transplants from healthy human donors. These findings reveal that gut bacteria regulate movement disorders in mice and suggest that alterations in the human microbiome represent a risk factor for PD."

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The short chain fatty acid butyrate is known to be deficient in PWPs and PWPs are known to typically have a disturbed gut microbiome which partially explains why constipation is common in PWPs. Butyrate has many positive effects in the human body and can act in an anti-inflammatory manner which would be important for PWPs who have elevated levels of inflammation and oxidative stress. I believe this is one reason why mannitol is effective for "some" and not for others, because as the disease progresses, the particular gut bacteria that is capable of interacting with prebiotics like mannitol, declines. If you don't have enough of those SCFA producing bacteria, all the mannitol in the world will not end up producing enough butyrate and this may be one reason why some people do not respond to mannitol, while responders may still have enough of the correct bacteria to still be able to produce butyrate at levels that should be beneficial for PWPs. I've written about this topic here:

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

It takes the right gut bacteria in conjunction with a prebiotic or certain types of fiber in order to create the small chain fatty acid butyrate. Among other things, mannitol acts as a prebiotic and can increase butyrate production in the gut, but only if there is enough of the butyrate producing bacteria for the mannitol to interact with. Butyrate is a very useful SCFA and getting its level back toward normal would likely go a long way toward repairing gut permeability and lessening symptoms of PD.

The gut biome of PWPs have significant studies that show which bacteria are depleted and which ones are overabundant. The mouse studies show that altering the gut biome in the right way using good bacteria that is lacking, can improve the disease symptoms while worsening the gut biome with bad bacteria can worsen the disease symptoms. What is lacking and would be a logical next step is the fecal microbiome transplants(FMT) in PWPs, but we have been waiting for those for years! They already know that when you give study mice the bacteria from healthy people, nothing happens, but when they give the mice gut bacteria from PWPs, the mice get PD symptoms. There are successful FMT's in humans, but none regarding PWPs. There may be one or two coming up, but they have been coming up for awhile and no results yet.

Art