Neurons in the gut are replaced every two weeks

摘要

THE neurons that make up the "brain" in your gut are almost entirely replaced every two weeks, a study in mice suggests. What's more, an imbalance in the gut's ability to repopulate itself with new neurons and clear out the dead ones could lead to Parkinson's disease. Subhash Kulkarni at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland and his colleagues found that neurons in the gut lining of mice are constantly dying at a high rate. These cells are part of the enteric nervous system, the body's "second brain". A mouse loses nearly a third of its gut neurons every seven days. But the dead neurons don't build up, so something must be clearing out the debris.