PP076 Clinical and Neurochemical Features of chronic constipation in patients with Parkinson disease

Objective: Chronic constipation (CC) is a well recognized gastrointestinal (GI) disturb in most Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. Nonetheless, the clinical features and the attendant enteric neuropathological / neurochemical abnormalities of CC in PD patients (CC/PD) are still largely undefined. In CC/PD patients our goals were to: (i) characterize CC by assessing colonic transit time (TT) and anorectal manometry (AM); (ii) analyze possible neurochemical abnormalities of colonic submucosal neuron. Methods: CC and related symptoms were assessed using the Rome III criteria, while PD was established by a Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (part III). CC was characterized in 25 PD patients (7F, 18M; age range: 64–85 years) by TT, AM and colonoscopy; 14 control subjects (4F, 10M; age range: 33–77 years) undergoing screening colonoscopy were included. Using routine biopsies during colonoscopy, we obtained submucosal specimens with related neural network in 10 CC/PD patients and 10 ...