Monday 14 October 2013

Recent findings shows that there are 2 forms of Parkinson's Diseases


Why can the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease vary so greatly from one patient to another? A consortium of researchers, headed by a team from the Laboratoire CNRS d'Enzymologie et Biochimie Structurales, is well on the way to providing an explanation. Parkinson’s disease is caused by a protein known as alpha-synuclein, which forms aggregates within neurons, killing them eventually. The researchers have succeeded in characterizing and producing two different types of alpha-synuclein aggregates. Better still, they have shown that one of these two forms is much more toxic than the other and has a greater capacity to invade neurons. 

This discovery takes account, at the molecular scale, of the existence of alpha-synuclein accumulation profiles that differ from one patient to the next. These results, published on October 10 in Nature Communications, represent a notable advance in our understanding of Parkinson’s disease and pave the way for the development of specific therapies targeting each form of the disease.

Read the press release here: http://www2.cnrs.fr/sites/en/fichier/trans_cp_parkinson_v3.pdf

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