New findings about how Parkinson's disease develops

A new study by researchers at CMM shows that the protein alpha-synuclein, which accumulates in patients with Parkinson’s disease, occurs bound to lipoprotein particles in cerebrospinal fluid, which may explain how the disease spreads in the nervous system. The study is published in the scientific journal PNAS.

Some 23,000 people in Sweden suffer from Parkinson’s disease, which is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s disease. There is still today no way to slow the progress of the disease. Parkinson’s disease is thought to be caused by harmful accumulations of the protein alpha-synuclein in the nerve cells. As the disease progresses, the protein spreads to new parts of the nervous system, but no-one has been able to show how the spread occurs.

“We can now show that alpha-synuclein binds to lipoprotein particles in cerebrospinal fluid and this may contribute to how alpha-synuclein spreads,” says Per Svenningsson, Professor in Neurology at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet.

Professor Per Svenningsson                                      

Photo: Ulf Sirborn

The study "α-synuclein−lipoprotein interactions and elevated ApoE level in cerebrospinal fluid from Parkinson's disease patients" 

was published in PNAS   3 July 2019, (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821409116).

Read the full news story at Karolinska Institutet website.