The Role of Food Accessibility in Weight Loss in a Rat Model of Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that causes a variety of motor and non-motor symptoms. The goal of this project was to understand whether the weight loss seen with Parkinson’s disease was due to the lack of being able to access the food because of the food placement or because of inability to chew the food due to degeneration of muscles required for chewing food. Both treatment groups, Adjusted Diet and Unadjusted Diet, lost weight after injections started, whereas control weights were stable throughout the experiment. There is no statistically significant difference in weight loss between adjusted and unadjusted food groups. Because there were no statistically significant findings between the two groups (adjusted food vs. unadjusted food), the weight loss seen with Parkinson’s disease still needs to be explored