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Neurodegenerative disorders are characterized by progressive and irreversible loss of neurons from specific regions of the brain. Prototypical neurodegenerative disorders include Parkinson disease (PD) and Huntington disease (HD), where loss of neurons from structures of the basal ganglia results in abnormalities in the control of movement; Alzheimer disease (AD), where the loss of hippocampal and cortical neurons leads to impairment of memory and cognitive ability; and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), where muscular weakness results from the degeneration of spinal, bulbar, and cortical motor neurons. Currently available therapies for neurodegenerative disorders alleviate the disease symptoms but do not alter the underlying neurodegenerative process.
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SELECTIVE VULNERABILITY AND NEUROPROTECTIVE STRATEGIES
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SELECTIVE VULNERABILITY. A striking feature of neurodegenerative disorders is the exquisite specificity of the disease processes for particular types of neurons. For example, in PD there is extensive destruction of the dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra, whereas neurons in the cortex and many other areas of the brain are unaffected. In contrast, neural injury in AD is most severe in the hippocampus and neocortex, and even within the cortex, the loss of neurons is not uniform but varies dramatically in different functional regions. In HD the mutant gene responsible for the disorder is expressed throughout the brain and in many other organs, yet the pathological changes are most prominent in the neostriatum. In ALS, there is loss of spinal motor neurons and the cortical neurons that provide their descending input. The diversity of these patterns of neural degeneration suggests that the process of neural injury results from the interaction of genetic and environmental influences.
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GENETICS AND ENVIRONMENT. Each of the major neurodegenerative disorders may be familial in nature. HD is exclusively familial; it is transmitted by autosomal dominant inheritance, and the molecular mechanism of the genetic defect has been defined. Nevertheless, environmental factors importantly influence the age of onset and rate of progression of HD symptoms. PD, AD, and ALS are mostly sporadic without clear pattern of inheritance. But for each there are well-recognized genetic forms. For example, there are both dominant (α-synuclein, LRRK2) and recessive (parkin, DJ-1, PINK1) gene mutations that may give rise to PD. In AD, mutations in the genes coding for the amyloid precursor protein (APP) and proteins known as the presenilins (involved in APP processing) lead to inherited forms of the disease. Mutations in the gene coding for copper-zinc superoxide dismutase (SOD1) account for about 2% of the cases of adult-onset ALS. There are also genetic risk factors that influence the probability of disease onset and modify the phenotype. For example, the apolipoprotein E (apoE) genotype constitutes an important risk factor for AD. Three distinct isoforms of this protein exist. Although all isoforms carry out their primary role in lipid metabolism equally well, individuals who are homozygous for the apoE4 allele ("4/4") have a much higher lifetime risk of AD than do ...