CNS News & Events
Sarah O’Donovan, PhD student, busy attending back to back conferences!
Sarah O’Donovan, a PhD student at the APC Microbiome Institute and the School of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, had a busy week presenting a poster at back to back conferences from August 24th – 29th 2017. Sarah's multi-disciplinary project enabled her to present a poster entitled ‘Investigation of the brain ↔ gut axis in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease: alterations in enteric nervous system pathology and the gut microbiome’, at both the NeuroGastro conference, held at University College Cork, and the Neuroscience Ireland conference, held in National University of Ireland, Galway.
Sarah's research work in Dr. Cora O’Neills lab, is focused on highlighting the important role of the brain ↔ gut axis in Parkinson’s disease. Results show for the first time that a brain derived PD animal model caused alterations in enteric nervous system pathology including neuronal loss, axonal degeneration and increased glial cell expression, as well as alterations in the gut microbiome; including faecal bile acid and microbiota composition. They have also shown for the first time, that exercise can protect against many of these gut pathologies. This work provides novel opportunities for understanding disease onset and spread, as well as possible early diagnostic markers and treatment opportunities for Parkinson’s disease.
This work was funded by an APC innovation platform award. Co-authors and contributors to this work are Prof. Aideen Sullivan, Erin Crowley, Dr Jillian Browne, Dr Orla O’Sullivan, Dr Niall Hyland, Dr Susan Joyce, Dr David Clarke, Dr Olivia O’Leary, Dr Suzanne Timmons, Dr Yvonne Nolan, Prof. Paul O’Toole.