Immune system may mount an attack in Parkinson’s disease | National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Immune system may mount an attack in Parkinson’s disease | National Institutes of Health (NIH): "A research team led by David Sulzer, Ph.D., professor of neurology at Columbia University in New York City and Alessandro Sette, Dr.Biol.Sci., professor of infectious diseases at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in California, examined the role of T cells in PD.

Drs. Sulzer and Sette, along with their colleagues, collected blood samples from 67 individuals with Parkinson’s disease and 36 healthy controls. Immune cells were extracted from the samples and mixed with portions of the alpha-synuclein protein, which accumulates in the brains of people with PD and can result in cell death.

They found that T cells from people with PD responded to the presence of alpha-synuclein to a much greater degree than those gathered from the control group.

In particular, two regions of alpha-synuclein evoked reactions from T cells: a section that often contains mutations linked with PD, and a portion undergoing a chemical change that can lead to accumulation of the protein in the brain.  "

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