Keto diet may reduce Alzheimer's risk by altering gut fungi

[JayPwP]

"Scientists have found associations between fungi living in the gut and mild cognitive impairment, which can lead to Alzheimer’s disease"

Maybe it applies to Parkinson's

[Esperanto]

Study suggests that gut fungi are not associated with Parkinson's disease: Although the bacterial microbiome is strongly connected to PD and gut dysfunction is nearly universal in this disease

sciencedaily.com/releases/2...

The bacterial gut microbiome is strongly associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), but no studies had previously investigated he role of fungi in the gut. In this study a team of investigators examined whether the fungal constituents of the gut microbiome are associated with PD.

[ktak43 in reply to Esperanto]

Something does not make sense. In this investigation healthunlocked.com/cure-par... they found that on average the 60 or so PD patients that they tested had much higher levels of ochratoxin a toxin than a normal person. I assume they used a urine test to determine this, but I am not sure. So it makes me wonder why the ochratoxin a study differs from the University of British Columbia study you posted. Unfortunately their paper is behind a paywall and so I am not sure how they obtained their results.

[Esperanto in reply to ktak43]

As Lauri Mischley herself says in her video from 3 years ago, further research is needed: “We have a long way to go before we say Parkinson’s is  caused by fungus….. and to find out if is reproducible in different labs and at  different places.”

“The Gut Mycobiome in Parkinson’s Disease” from Dr Silke Appel Cresswell e o in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, 2020 is indeed one of those further researches, which unfortunately does not have the ‘desired’ outcome:

Fungi were very sparse among participants' fecal microbiomes. After filtering, 106 of the 152 participants (64/95 PD and 42/57 control) remained for downstream compositional analysis; the remainder had virtually no detectable fungal genomic content. Most of the genera identified were environmental or dietary in origin.

This paper plays an important role by answering the call by the PD research community and funding organizations to publish negative results, crucial to avoid investing precious research funding into likely futile endeavors and providing a more balanced reflection of data in the field.

"The data are an important piece in the puzzle of understanding the overall role of the gut microbiome in PD," continued Dr. Appel-Cresswell. "PD patients can rest assured that gut fungal overgrowth, or dysbiosis, is likely not a contributing factor to any of their PD symptoms, both motor and non-motor."

"The gut microbiome in PD continues to be an exciting field of research where we are just at the beginning of unraveling potential mechanisms. It will be important to publish negative results as well as positive findings along with detailed methods to have a realistic reflection of the data in the literature to accelerate discovery," she concluded.