Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease are both model diseases. Parkinson's disease is the most common of several akinetic-rigid syndromes and Huntington's disease is only one of an ever growing number of trinucleotide repeat disorders. Molecular genetic studies and subsequent molecular biological studies have provided fascinating new insights into the pathogenesis of both disorders and t...

In several neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease, neuronal systems employing the neurotransmitter dopamine have been implicated in either the pathology or the drug treatments of the disease (for review see [ 11). It is therefore of some importance to understand the mechanism of action of dopamine in controlling brain function, both in the normal state ...

The misfolding and progressive aggregation of specific proteins in selective regions of the nervous system is a seminal occurrence in many neurodegenerative disorders, and the interaction between pathological/toxic proteins to cause neurodegeneration is a hot topic of current neuroscience research. Despite clinical, genetic and experimental differences, increasing evidence indicates considerabl...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to identify incidence and survival patterns in conformational neurodegenerative disorders (CNDDs). METHODS We identified 2563 reports on the incidence of eight conditions representing sporadic, acquired and genetic, protein-associated, i.e., conformational, NDD groups and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). We selected 245 papers for full-text exam...

Mitochondria contain the only extra-nuclear source of DNA. Under evolutionary pressure mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has adapted from genomes containing over 1,000 kb containing significant quantities of non-coding DNA to the highly compact mammalian mtDNA. In humans, the mitochondrial genome consists of a small (16.5 kb) double-stranded circular genome constituting less than 1% of the total cellul...

Neurodegenerative diseases are debilitating disorders which compromise motor or cognitive functions and rapidly becoming a global communal disorder with over 46.8 million people suffering dementia worldwide. Aetiological studies have showed that who exposed to agricultural, occupational environmental toxic chemicals can interfere degenerate dopaminergic neurons prone developing neurodegenerativ...

Microglia often accumulate around degenerating neurons. These macrophage-like immune cells produce a variety of neurotoxic and neuroprotective factors. Thus, the accumulation of glia in various neurologic disorders does not reflect only gliosis, but likely results in an active contribution to neuroinflammation, neural degeneration, and cell regeneration. We previously showed that glutamate is t...

Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are the two most common neurodegenerative disorders. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is the most common demyelinating disorder. Although there are strong inflammatory components to multiple sclerosis, it is clear that the disease also has a strong neurodegenerative component. Combined these three disease processes affect more than 6 million American...

The image for Fig 4 is incorrect. Please see the corrected Fig 4 here. Copyright: © 2015 de Pedro-Cuesta 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.

Abnormal protein aggregates are commonly observed in affected neurons in many neurodegenerative disorders. We have reported that VCP (valosin-containing protein) co-localizes with protein aggregates in neurons of patients and in cultured cells expressing diseased proteins. However, the significance of such co-localization remains to be elucidated. In the present paper, I discuss the involvement...