Fecal Microbiota Transplant as a Treatment for Neurodegenerative Conditions

It is thought that an appreciable fraction of the chronic inflammation of aging is caused by changes in the gut microbiome. There is a bidirectional interaction between the immune system and the microbial populations of the intestinal tract. The immune system gardens these populations, destroying problematic microbes. Microbes secrete metabolites and other molecules that can either benefit or harm the function of the immune system, the harms caused particularly by those microbes capable of provoking a sustained inflammatory response. The immune system declines with age for a range of reasons, and reduced efficacy in immune surveillance of gut microbes allows harmful microbial populations to grow in number, in turn further degrading immune function by inducing a state of chronic inflammation. Many of the common, ultimately fatal age-related conditions are driven by chronic inflammation and the resulting disruption of normal tissue function. This is very much the case for neurodegenerative conditions. Inflammation in the brain is a prominent feature of tauopathies such as Alzheimer's disease, for example, in which toxic aggregates of altered tau protein form and spread in parallel with the inflammation of brain tissue. Researchers have shown that removing pro-inflammatory senescent cells from the brain, using senolytic drugs, reverses pathology in animal models of tauopathy. How much of inflammation in the brain is the result of senescent cells versus the gut microbiome ...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs