Research in the past two decades has revealed that microbial organisms in the gut influence health and disease in many ways, particularly related to immune function, metabolism and resistance to infection. Recent studies have shown that gut microbes also may cause or worsen Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.
University of Louisville neurology professor Robert P. Friedland, M.D., and Matthew R. Chapman, Ph.D., professor at the University of Michigan, have proposed a new term to describe an interaction between gut microbiota and the brain in an article released today in PLOS Pathogens.
Friedland and Chapman propose the term "mapranosis" for the process by which amyloid proteins produced by microbes (bacteria, fungi and others) alter the structure of proteins (proteopathy) and enhance inflammation in the nervous system, thereby initiating or augmenting brain disease. The term is derived from Microbiota Associated Protepathy And Neuroinflammation + osis (a process).
Friedland hopes that giving the process a name will facilitate awareness of the process, as well as research leading to therapeutic opportunities.
"It is critical to define the ways in which gut bacteria and other organisms interact with the host to create disease, as there are many ways in which the microbiota may be altered to influence health," Friedland said.
