will take place on Tuesday, June 17th, 2025 from 16:00 to 17:00 hours in the CBBM Building, Ground Floor, Seminar Room Levi-Montalcini.
Abstract: Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the fastest growing neurological disorder. The massive percentage increase of PD patients (60.7%) from 1990-2021, compared to a moderate increase for Alzheimer’s disease (3.2%) is an unexplained phenomenon. Yet there are currently no disease-modifying interventions, and existing treatments only target the management of symptoms. Understanding the factors that lead to the development of PD is a major scientific and medical challenge, hampering the identification of effective therapies. PD is heterogeneous, with variable onset. The mean age at onset is 70 years, although 4% of patients develop early-onset disease before 50 years of age. PD's complex etiology includes several known genetic factors, environmental and lifestyle factors, and age. Multiple genes have been implicated in familial and sporadic PD. In familial late-onset PD, dominantly inherited LRRK2 p.G2019S is the most common cause. On the other hand, PRKN and PINK1 variants cause early-onset disease. The prevalence of monogenic forms (when including GBA1 variants) in PD is much greater (~15%) than in other neurodegenerative diseases. Our group’s most recent finding on RAB32 in autosomal dominant PD still shows reduced penetrance. Thus, the genetic factors uncovered to date do not explain diversity in the manifestation of PD – i.e., carriers of the same pathogenic variants in PD show variable age at onset and some even remain unaffected at an old age. The most obvious culprit is environmental exposure and lifestyle factors. The interaction between genetic and environmental or lifestyle factors can serve as a modifier of disease manifestation.
