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Gastrointestinal problems such as an esophagus or stomach ulcer can increase the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 76 percent, according to a new study. The authors analyzed the endoscopy reports of 9,350 patients and found that those with upper gastrointestinal diseases, particularly ulcers or other types of mucosal damage to the esophagus, stomach or upper small intestine, were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease. They found that they were much more likely to develop it later in life. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network of Open Investigators, add to evidence that age-related diseases and neurodegenerative diseases have long been thought to originate in the brain, possibly starting in the gut. According to the authors, digestive problems are common in patients with neurological diseases. Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the United States found that digestive problems in people with Parkinson's disease often appear 20 years before symptoms such as tremors and stiffness in the arms and legs appear, and that these symptoms are more common in people most of the time cause.

They say digestive problems can include symptoms such as constipation, drooling, difficulty swallowing and delayed gastric emptying. According to the authors, constipation and difficulty swallowing are strong risk factors that more than double the risk of developing Parkinson's disease. According to the researchers, one of the possible biological mechanisms underlying this link between the gut and the risk of Parkinson's disease is that there may be problems regulating dopamine, a brain chemical that plays an important role in digestion . The authors also suspect that digestive disorders could lead to the buildup of the protein alpha-synuclein, which is how Parkinson's disease manifests itself in the brain. Future research could help better understand these mechanisms, they added.