A comparative analysis of Parkinson's disease and inflammatory bowel disease gut microbiomes highlights shared depletions in key butyrate-producing bacteria

Abstract: Epidemiological studies reveal that a diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is associated with an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease (PD). The presence of gut dysbiosis has been documented in both PD and IBD patients, but it is currently unknown how alterations in the gut microbiome may contribute to the epidemiological link between both diseases. To identify shared and distinct features of the PD and IBD microbiome, we performed the first joint analysis of 54 PD, 26 IBD, and 16 healthy control gut metagenomes recruited from clinics at the University of Florida, directly comparing the gut microbiomes from PD and IBD persons for the first time. Larger, publicly available PD and IBD metagenomic datasets were also analyzed to validate and extend our findings. Depletions in short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) producing bacteria, including Roseburia intestinalis, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, Anaerostipes hadrus, and Eubacterium rectale, as well as depletions in SCFA-synthesis pathways, were demonstrated across PD and IBD datasets. We posit that direct comparison of PD and IBD gut microbiomes will be important in identifying features within the IBD gut which may be associated with PD. The data revealed a consistent depletion in SCFA-producing bacteria across both PD and IBD, suggesting that loss of these microbes may influence the pathophysiology of both disease states. 

Zenodo contents: In this Zenodo archive we provide the post-QC and taxonomic and functional profiling "Source Data" used in all downstream analyses to generate tables and figures seen in our manuscript. We also provide the link to our GitHub repository where we have stored the code used to perform the bioinformatic processing of the shotgun metagenomic sequences and stastical analyses. Individual sample raw shotgun metagenomic sequences and metadata from our UFPF dataset are available on NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) under BioProject PRJNA1096686.