Short-Chain Fatty Acid-Producing Gut Microbiota Is Decreased in Parkinson’s Disease but Not in Rapid-Eye-Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder

Gut dysbiosis has been repeatedly reported in Parkinson’s disease (PD) but only once in idiopathic rapid-eye-movement sleep behavior disorder (iRBD) from Germany. Abnormal aggregation of α-synuclein fibrils causing PD possibly starts from the intestine, although this is still currently under debate. iRBD patients frequently develop PD. Early-stage gut dysbiosis that is causally associated with PD is thus expected to be observed in iRBD. We analyzed gut microbiota in 26 iRBD patients and 137 controls by 16S rRNA sequencing (16S rRNA-seq). Our iRBD data set was meta-analyzed with the German iRBD data set and was compared with gut microbiota in 223 PD patients. Unsupervised clustering of gut microbiota by LIGER, a topic model-based tool for single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis, revealed four enterotypes in controls, iRBD, and PD. Short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria were conserved in an enterotype observed in controls and iRBD, whereas they were less conserved in enterotypes observed in PD. Genus Akkermansia and family Akkermansiaceae were consistently increased in both iRBD in two countries and PD in five countries. Short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-producing bacteria were not significantly decreased in iRBD in two countries. In contrast, we previously reported that recognized or putative SCFA-producing genera Faecalibacterium, Roseburia, and Lachnospiraceae ND3007 group were consistently decreased in PD in five countries. In α-synucleinopathy, increase of mucin-layer-degrading genus Akkermansia is observed at the stage of iRBD, whereas decrease of SCFA-producing genera becomes obvious with development of PD. IMPORTANCE Twenty studies on gut microbiota in PD have been reported, whereas only one study has been reported on iRBD from Germany. iRBD has the highest likelihood ratio to develop PD. Our meta-analysis of iRBD in Japan and Germany revealed increased mucin-layer-degrading genus Akkermansia in iRBD. Genus Akkermansia may increase the intestinal permeability, as we previously observed in PD patients, and may make the intestinal neural plexus exposed to oxidative stress, which can lead to abnormal aggregation of prion-like α-synuclein fibrils in the intestine. In contrast to PD, SCFA-producing bacteria were not decreased in iRBD. As SCFA induces regulatory T (Treg) cells, a decrease of SCFA-producing bacteria may be a prerequisite for the development of PD. We propose that prebiotic and/or probiotic therapeutic strategies to increase the intestinal mucin layer and to increase intestinal SCFA potentially retard the development of iRBD and PD.