Most patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) display gastrointestinal symptoms, such as severe constipation, and gastroparesis. However, few studies have addressed the physiological substrate of these symptoms.

We recently validated the novel PET tracer [11C]donepezil for the in vivo imaging of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) density in internal organs, and demonstrated that PD patients display a striking loss of AChE density in the small intestine and pancreas.

This decrease is very likely caused, in part, by loss of cholinergic parasympathetic presynapses. The aim of this project is to investigate whether damage to the parasympathetic nervous system in the gut is present in early PD patients and even prodromal PD patients.

Furhermore, we wish to validate [11C]donepezil in a group of patients with known parasympathetic denervation to ensure that the PET tracer is indeed imaging cholinergic parasympathetic synapses.

Contact Tatyana D. Fedorova, MD, PhD Student, for more information

Main Supervisor: Per Borghammer, 

This PhD-study investigates the distribution and burden of alpha-synuclein pathology in post-mortem human brains from patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and incidental Lewy body disease using immunohistochemical (IHC) methods. The post-mortem brains used in this study was collected in 1945-1982 and are part of the Danish Brain Collection (previously located in Risskov).

Neuropathological studies have shown a brainstem-predominant pattern of alpha-synuclein pathology and a limbic system-predominant pattern. Brains from the Danish Brain Collection have both hemispheres conserved in a fixative making it possible to perform bilateral IHC analyses.

We aim to explore the symmetry/asymmetry aspect of PD by investigating the alpha-synuclein distribution bilaterally.

Here, we hypothesize that brainstem-predominant cases will show a symmetrical spreading pattern representing PD cases, where pathology originates in the autonomic nervous system, whereas limbic system-predominant cases will show an asymmetrical spreading pattern representing PD cases, where pathology originates within the brain in a single site, i.e. unilaterally.

Contact Mie Just, PhD student

Main supervisor: Per Borghammer,  PhD, Clinical Professor