How do abnormal proteins get into the brain in Parkinson’s disease? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Abundant evidence points to a protein called alpha synuclein in causing the range of symptoms seen in Parkinson’s disease, with the condition progressing as it travels up to the brain. Johns Hopkins neurologist Liana Rosenthal describes the process.

Rosenthal: Alpha synuclein travels up and we think it travels up from the gut and it goes all the way up into the spinal cord, into the brainstem and into the cortex. The upper part of the brain is the cortex. More and more we are seeing that there's probably two different entry points for alpha synuclein, 2 patterns of deposition. One of them starts in the spinal cord and works its way to the cortex. So there seems to be other people it seems to be starting in the nose part first.        :31

Because alpha synuclein interferes with normal neuron function it produces the range of symptoms seen in Parkinson’s disease. Rosenthal notes that right now there is no way to stop this progression or remove the alpha synuclein, although research is ongoing. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.