Dissertation 18 Sep 2018: Bojing Liu

On Tuesday Sep 18, Bojing Liu will defend her thesis "Parkinson’s disease etiology : beyond the brain and late adulthood". Her opponent will be Associate Professor Per Borghammer from the Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University. Bojing's supervisors are Karin Wirdefeldt, Honglei Chen and Fang Fang.

The causes and exact mechanisms underlying Parkinson’s disease (PD) remain elusive. Braak’s hypothesis suggests that PD pathology may start in the enteric nervous system and later spread to the brain via the vagus nerve. In this thesis, Bojing aims to explore the etiology of PD by focusing on developmental origins related to early infection and inflammation, gastrointestinal aspects, and olfactory function using various register and population based datasets. Four studies are included in the thesis and by taking advantage of Swedish nationwide registers, there is some evidence supporting Braak’s hypothesis and the importance of the gut-to-brain axis in PD development. The data does however not support the importance of developmental origins of PD. The thesis confirms the association between poor olfaction and mortality in healthy older adults from the Health, Aging and Body Composition study and identified PD or dementia and body weight loss as part of the potential mechanisms underlying the association.

Time and location: 09:00, Sep 18 2018 in the lecture hall Atrium, Nobels väg 12B, Karolinska Institutet, Solna