Is Parkinson’s disease caused by dysfunctional lipids?

Abstract

James Parkinson, a 19th-century British surgeon, first reported what he called “the shaking palsy” in 1817, after observing a handful of patients with tremors and difficulty moving. More than 200 years later, the cause of Parkinson’s, the neurodegenerative disease that now bears his name, remains unknown. For decades, a protein called α-synuclein has been the lead suspect as the culprit in Parkinson’s, which is marked by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons and motor dysfunction. When studying the brain tissue of people who have died of the disease, pathologists find dense clumps in the brain, especially in dopamine-producing neurons. These clumps, known as Lewy bodies, are packed with α-synuclein that is misfolded and aggregated. If the phenomenon sounds familiar, that’s because protein clumps are a hallmark of another common neurodegenerative disease, Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers have spent decades and billions of dollars developing drugs that can prevent or break up plaques made