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