Human Tissue Study Discovers Stronger Link between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Study in a Sentence: Researchers found pathological evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in post-mortem brain tissues from 213 patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease with dementia (PDD) or dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), with the level of Alzheimer’s pathology predicting dementia symptom onset and survival in these patients.  

Healthy for Humans: This study can help select the patients most likely to benefit from clinical trials targeting the pathologies involved in both of these disease processes. It suggests that biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease severity may be used to grade the disease severity in patients with Parkinson’s disease with dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies and guide their therapeutic intervention strategies.   

Redefining Research: This study conducted with human tissues provides novel insights into pathophysiology and disease course of human diseases that may not be discovered otherwise in animal models.  

High magnification photomicrographs of Alzheimer’s pathology (tau tangle, left) and PDD/DLB pathology (alpha-synuclein Lewy body, right) found in human brain tissues. Credit: Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania