Effects of levodopa on gut bacterial antibiotic resistance in Parkinson’s disease rat

The second most prevalent neurodegenerative ailment, Parkinson’s disease (PD), is characterized by both motor and non-motor symptoms. Levodopa is the backbone of treatment for PD at the moment. However, levodopa-induced side effects, such as dyskinesia, are commonly seen in PD patients. Recently, several antibiotics were found to present neuroprotective properties against neurodegenerative and neuro-inflammatory processes, which might be developed to effective therapies against PD. In this study, we aimed to identify if levodopa treatment could influence the gut bacterial antibiotic resistance in PD rat. Fecal samples were collected from healthy rats and 6-OHDA induced PD rats treated with different doses of levodopa, metagenomic sequencing data showed that levodopa resulted in gut bacteria composition change, the biomarkers of gut bacteria analyzed by LEfSe changed as well. More interestingly, compared with levodopa (5 mg/kg)-treated or no levodopa-treated PD rats, levodopa (10 mg/kg) caused a significant decrease in the abundance of tetW and vanTG genes in intestinal bacteria, which were related to tetracycline and vancomycin resistance, while the abundance of AAC6-lb-Suzhou gene increased apparently, which was related to aminoglycosides resistance, even though the total quantity of Antibiotic Resistance Gene (ARG) and Antibiotic Resistance Ontology (ARO) among all groups did not significantly differ. Consequently, our results imply that the combination of levodopa and antibiotics, such as tetracycline and vancomycin, in the treatment of PD may decrease the amount of corresponding antibiotic resistance genes in gut bacteria, which would give a theoretical basis for treating PD with levodopa combined with tetracycline and vancomycin in the future.