Mice can get PD-like symptoms WITHOUT alpha-synuclein clumping

[ElliotGreen]

I was reading this scientific article that was mentioned in a preceding post.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/303...

I was interested to read that they worked with two mouse models of PD. One strain of mice had clumping of alpha-synuclein fibrils that led to Parkinson's symptoms. The other strain of mice did not have alpha-synuclein clumping, but had problems with the mitochondria. These also exhibited Parkinson's symptoms.

I did a screenshot to quote a relevant part from the body of this paper.

Judging from how things manifest in mice, it looks like Parkinsonian disease can be caused by alpha synuclein clumping, or by genetic problems with mitochondria. This was news to me. I suspected as much, but this is evidence.

[janers]

Perhaps this is part of the explanation for such a wide variety of symptoms that are attributed to Parkinson’s. I’m thinking specifically of tremor dominant vs stiffness dominant.

[ElliotGreen in reply to janers]

That's interesting. I have not speculated very much in that direction, although I'm aware of notions that different kinds of Parkinson's may be clumped and people in those clumps may respond to different treatments differently.

A different way of looking at it is seeing the different symptoms in a more related fashion. Have you seen the movie Awakenings? There is a line where the neurologist character (Oliver Sacks played by Robin Williams) speculates that strong rigidity is actually a very extreme tremor. As someone with hypokinesia and rigidity who occasionally has tremors, this makes some sense to me. My rigidity comes from two sets of muscle groups tensing in opposition to each other. My tremoring comes out of an oscillation of the same opposing muscles. To me, they aren't that different.

[janers in reply to ElliotGreen]

I haven’t seen awakenings. It’s now on my watchlist. That is interesting about stiffness being extreme tremors. I know sometimes while doing yoga I’ll have a strong tremor sesstin my arm. I do think of it as loosening up the stiff muscle. Sigh

But I wonder about the Bradykinesia. Is that what you label hypokinesia? I think that would make sense as a mitochondrial issues.

[ElliotGreen in reply to janers]

Yes, I use the term hypokinesia. I don't know if it's a common usage, but to words that are used in context of Parkinson's are bradykinesia and akinesia. The first means slow movement, and the second means a lack of movement. Certainly have slow movement, and I have difficulty moving, but it isn't no movement. So I use hypokinesia (low movement) to describe this.

[ElliotGreen in reply to janers]

More importantly, I think it speaks to the issue that different people may respond to different treatments, whether or not there is a connection to their specific symptoms.