Parkinson‘s Disease and GIT Involvement

Involvement of the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract in patients with Parkinson disease is reported less frequently than the involvement of the lower part. Its clinical impact is, however, substantial because dysphagic symptoms considerably decrease the quality of life and may lead to life threatening complications. Even though the clinical symptoms related to esophageal motility disorders as a result of Parkinson disease are more common in the advanced stages of the disease, these could be dia­gnosed much earlier using high resolution manometry. The authors describe the basic principles of dia­gnostic management of dysphagia in patients with Parkinson disease and in the clinical part they present an analysis of their patient cohort. They found out that nonspecific and diverse motility disorders are present in most patients, even without dysphagic symptoms. In the experimental part, we outlined new possibilities for dia­gnostic procedures using the most up-to-date methods for the detection of pathological forms of alpha-synuclein and advanced microscopic methods. Key words: esophageal motility disorders – manometry – Parkinson disease – alpha-synuclein – FLIM analysis – immunohistochemistry