Vagus Nerve and Stomach Synucleinopathy in Parkinson’s Disease, Incidental Lewy Body Disease, and Normal Elderly Subjects: Evidence Against the “Body-First” Hypothesis

• Published in: Journal of Parkinson's disease Vol. 11; no. 4; pp. 1833 - 1843
• Main Authors: Beach, Thomas G., Adler, Charles H., Sue, Lucia I., Shill, Holly A., Driver-Dunckley, Erika, Mehta, Shyamal H., Intorcia, Anthony J., Glass, Michael J., Walker, Jessica E., Arce, Richard, Nelson, Courtney M., Serrano, Geidy E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.01.2021; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Aged; alpha-Synuclein; Autopsy; Carotid artery; Gastric mucosa; Humans; Hypotheses; Lewy bodies; Lewy body disease; Lewy Body Disease - pathology; Medulla oblongata; Movement disorders; Nervous system; Neurodegenerative diseases; Paraffin; Parkinson Disease - pathology; Parkinson's disease; Stomach; Stomach - pathology; Synuclein; Synucleinopathies; Vagus nerve; Vagus Nerve - pathology; gastrointestinal; Pathology; pathogenesis; peripheral nerve; autopsy; etiology

Background: Braak and others have proposed that Lewy-type α-synucleinopathy in Parkinson’s disease (PD) may arise from an exogenous pathogen that passes across the gastric mucosa and then is retrogradely transported up the vagus nerve to the medulla. Objective: We tested this hypothesis by immunohis...