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04 February 2026 Immune cells from the gut drive development of Parkinson’s disease in the brain In ‘body-first’ Parkinson’s disease, misfolded proteins propagate from the gut’s nervous system to the brain. Immune-cell activity seems to play a key part in this spread. By Veerle Baekelandt ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8966-2921 0 Veerle Baekelandt Veerle Baekelandt is in the Department of Neurosciences, Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), 3000 Leuven, Belgium. View author publications PubMed Google Scholar
Parkinson’s disease has the fastest-growing prevalence of any neurodegenerative disorder worldwide1. Moving away from the conventional brain-centric view, scientists increasingly view the disease as a systemic disorder that involves immune cells as well as neurons. Its clinical presentation is diverse, but two main subtypes of the disorder have been proposed: brain-first and body-first2. In body-first Parkinson’s disease, the process starts mainly in the gut and spreads towards the brain. However, the exact mechanism of gut-to-brain spreading is far from understood. Writing in Nature, De Schepper et al.3 demonstrate that immune cells in the gut take up the characteristic misfolded proteins of Parkinson’s disease. These cells then activate a population of circulating T cells that migrate to the brain, where neurodegeneration is initiated.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00284-7
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Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.
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