Commonalities in the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) are neurodegenerative diseases that have a tremendous impact on the lives of affected individuals. There is a great probability of developing concurrent parkinsonism in AD and vice versa than would be predicted by independent prevalence of each disease. Both diseases have genetic familial forms with a prevalence of less than 5–10%, but the majority of the cases are sporadic. Several hypotheses exist regarding the etiology of these diseases, such as oxidative stress, inflammatory processes, ubiquitin–proteasome system dysfunction, energy deficits, cell cycle deficiencies and glutamate exitotoxicities. Since diagnosis occurs in late-stage disease after neuronal loss, it decreases the opportunity for neuroprotective/neurorestorative therapies. Therefore, early and specific diagnosis is required as well as new therapy approaches for the growing burden of AD and PD.

Keywords::

• Alzheimer’s disease
• biomarker
• environment
• familial form
• gene
• Parkinson’s disease

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.