The difficult work of trying to understand Parkinson’s disease continues, with a new study showing that the condition might be triggered earlier than had previously been thought.
Researchers from the US and Canada analyzed neurons from patients with Parkinson’s, discovering a previously unknown culprit for symptoms of the disease that may begin before any of the others.
This trigger is a malfunction in the synapses (or connections) between neurons that manage dopamine production, subsequently leading to a toxic buildup of the chemical that can then cause the dopaminergic neuron damage that characterizes Parkinson’s.
“We showed that dopaminergic synapses become dysfunctional before neuronal death occurs,” says neuroscientist Dimitri Krainc, from Northwestern University in the US.
