News Medical Life Sciences - The University of Oulu - Aug 26 2026
A new study from the University of Oulu suggests that gut bacteria may send different biological signals in Parkinson’s disease. The findings add to growing evidence that changes in the gut could be linked to Parkinson’s disease and may eventually help researchers identify new underlying mechanisms for the condition.
Rather than looking only at which bacteria are present in the gut, the researchers focused on the biological messages they send. Gut bacteria release extracellular vesicles, tiny particles that carry proteins and other molecules and can travel between cells, likely extending the microbial signaling beyond the gut.
The study, published in iScience, found that people with Parkinson’s disease had more of these vesicles in their stool samples than healthy individuals. The vesicles were also larger on average and carried a different mix of bacterial proteins, suggesting that microbial communication may be altered in the disease.
Microbiome research has traditionally focused on which bacteria are present and how their relative abundance changes. Our findings suggest that we should also ask what these bacteria are sending out into the body.”
Anatoliy Samoylenko, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oulu and author of the study
The researchers analyzed faecal samples from 20 people with Parkinson’s disease and 19 healthy controls. They isolated extracellular vesicles produced by the gut microbiota and characterized them using nanoparticle tracking analysis, electron microscopy, 16S rRNA sequencing and mass spectrometry-based proteomics.
The analyses revealed differences between the Parkinson’s disease and control groups at several levels. Both the gut microbiota itself and the vesicles it produced showed distinct bacterial compositions. The vesicles from people with Parkinson’s disease also carried a different set of proteins.
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