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One of the most underdiagnosed and undertreated non-motor symptoms of Parkinson's Disease is chronic pain. This is generally treated with analgesics which is not always effective and can cause several side-effects. Therefore, new ways to reduce chronic pain are needed. Several experimental studies show that CT-optimal touch can reduce acute pain. However, little is known about the effect of CT-optimal touch on chronic pain. The aim of the current study is to investigate whether CT-optimal touch can reduce the chronic pain experience in Parkinson patients. In this intervention study, 17 Parkinson patients underwent three conditions; no touch, CT-optimal touch and CT non-optimal touch with a duration of one week each. During each touch week, participants received touch from their partners twice a day for 15 minutes. Results show that both types of touch ameliorate the chronic pain experience. Furthermore, it appears that it is slightly more beneficial to apply CT-optimal touch also because it is perceived as more pleasant. Therefore, we argue that CT-optimal touch might be used when immediate pain relief is needed. Importantly, this study shows that CT-optimal touch can reduce chronic pain in Parkinson's Disease and can be administered by a partner which makes it feasible to implement CT-optimal touch as daily routine., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Meijer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background/objectives: This study examined the correlation between pancreatic microbiome and patients characteristics. Furthermore, we compared different duodenal materials to examine their reflection of the pancreatic microbiome., Methods: Patients undergoing pancreatic surgery were included in the study. Characteristics of those patients were prospectively registered and sterile pancreatic biopsies were collected during surgery. After completion of the resection, duodenal fluid, -tissue and -swab were collected. Bacterial DNA was extracted and analyzed with IS-pro assay., Results: Paired samples of 51 patients were available for evaluation, including pancreatic biopsies from all patients, 22 duodenal fluids, 21 duodenal swabs and 11 duodenal tissues. The pancreatic microbiome consisted mostly of Proteobacteria followed by Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, Fusobacteria and Verrucomicrobia (FAFV) and Bacteroidetes. On species level, Enterococcus faecalis, Escherichia coli, and Enterobacter-Klebsiella were most abundant. In pancreatic biopsies, the total bacterial load and Proteobacteria load were significantly higher in patients with biliary drainage (54618.0 vs 5623.5; 9119.0 vs 2067.1). Patients who used proton pump inhibitors had a significantly higher total bacterial load (115964.7 vs 8495.8), more FAFV (66862.9 vs 1890.1), more Proteobacteria (24245.9 vs 2951.4) and more Bacteroidetes (542.5 vs 25.8). The head of the pancreas contained significantly more bacteria (21193.4 vs 2096.8) and more FAFV (5225.7 vs 19.0) compared to the tail, regardless of biliary drainage. Furthermore, the microbiome of all duodenal materials showed a weak correlation with the pancreatic microbiome., Conclusion: Biliary drainage, use of proton pump inhibitors, and anatomic location of the pancreatic biopsy influence the pancreatic microbiome. Furthermore, the duodenal microbiome does not suffice as a surrogate for the pancreatic microbiome., Competing Interests: I have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: AEB has proprietary rights to the IS-pro technique and is co-owner of the spin-off company InBiome. SJ is an employee of InBiome. This did not influence the results generated by this study and this does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials., (Copyright: © 2022 Zwart et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)