October 7, 2026

@michaelokun

Could going gluten-free help Parkinson’s disease? A provocative 12-month randomized study of 57 folks with Parkinson’s just presented as a late breaking abstract at the Movement Disorders Congress in Seoul found that a gluten-free diet was safe and well tolerated and, although it did not improve motor symptoms, it was associated w/ modestly better cognitive performance and improved quality of life, along w/ changes in lipid and metabolic profiles. The intriguing part was that metabolic changes differed depending on disease duration, raising the possibility that diet may interact differently w/ Parkinson’s biology at different stages of disease. This is interesting, but 57 participants is a small study, and it is far too early to recommend a gluten-free diet for everyone w/ Parkinson’s based on these results. We need larger studies to determine whether this is a reproducible biological signal, who might benefit, and whether the benefit is truly related to removing gluten or to other changes that accompany the diet. https://www.mdscongress.org/Abstracts/Late-breaking