Oxidative stress, inflammation and a-synuclein overexpression1 confer risk for development of a-synucleinopathies— neurodegenerative diseases that include Parkinson disease and Lewy body dementia2. Dopaminergic neurons undergo degeneration in these diseases and are particularly susceptible to oxidative stress because dopamine metabolism itself creates reactive oxygen species3. Intraneuronal dep...

Here, we present a patient with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) who developed initial symptoms mimicking progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Before the development of typical CJD symptoms, functional imaging supported a diagnosis of PSP when [(123)I]-FP-CIT-SPECT showed a defect in striatal dopamine transporter binding, while [(18)F]-fluorodeoxyglucose PET showed cortical hypometabolism sugge...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common disorder, particularly among the elderly, with a prevalence of 100–200 per 100,000 in the general population1. In most patients, PD is sporadic, but rare genetic forms exist. Causative mutations have recently been identified on the a-synuclein gene on chromosome 4, responsible for Lewy body-positive , autosomal dominant PD, and the parkin gene on chromosome ...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most common neurodegenerative motor disease, affecting more than 1% of the population above the age of 60. The disorder is primarily characterized by the selective loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) in the midbrain and formation of intraneuronal inclusions called "Lewy bodies" which contain alpha-synuclein as their major pro...