I found it very interesting that one marker of neurodegeneration was reduced;
"It is well-established that the intestinal milieu can influence the brain, including neuroinflammation, levels of trophic factors, and neurodegeneration. No prebiotic intervention-induced changes were noted for neuroinflammation assessed via HMGB-1 nor for the neurotrophic factor BDNF (Table 2). However, the selected marker of degeneration NfL was reduced after the prebiotic intervention (Paired t test: P = 0.003, Fig. 4c and Table 2). The change in NfL was driven by newly diagnosed, non-medicated PD participants (Paired t test: P = 0.008), although treated PD participants also had reduced NfL following the prebiotic intervention (Supplementary Table S7).
"Seems like those with dyskinesias might want to look into this further;
"Lastly, differences were observed between newly diagnosed, non-medicated and treated PD participants. Because PD is a highly heterogeneous disease, future studies are needed to begin to understand which populations can benefit most from a prebiotic intervention. For example, levodopa-treated PD patients may particularly benefit from a prebiotic intervention. The PD-associated microbiota is characterized by a high abundance of bacteria that contain the levodopa metabolizing enzyme, tyrosine decarboxylase (TDC)54,55,56 and the prebiotic intervention may influence the relative abundance of TDC-containing bacteria and positively impact treatment efficacy and reduce dyskinesias in levodopa-treated PD patients."
It would be interesting to see the change and ratio of the three predominant SCFAs during the course of treatment from beginning to end.
I often wonder why they infrequently use synbiotics that contain a probiotic like PS128 in conjunction with a prebiotic that it is known to thrive on? The proper prebiotic would certainly be additive to the probiotic.
Yes, that would have been nice, but one can sort of surmise what the results would have been. In trying to figure out which prebiotics to put in the bar, they applied different ones to fecal slurries and measured the SCFAs produced. The proportions of SCFAs for the four prebiotics they ended up using, are shown in the last graph on this page; nature.com/articles/s41467-...
We were already using potato starch and inulin, but I might look into adding rice bran based on this;
"Although rice bran produced less SCFA than the other fibers, it increased the abundance of unique bacteria that were not enriched by other fibers (e.g., Ruminococcus, Dorea, Fusobacterium)."
After all, it could have been something else produced by one of these three bacteria that was responsible for the good results, and not SCFAs at all.
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