Alzheimer & Parkinson

Galactocerebrosidase (GALC) is a lysosomal enzyme crucially involved in the catabolism of galactosphingolipids. Among galactosphingolipids, galactosylceramide and sulfatide are crucial determinants for oligodendrocyte differentiation, as well as myelin stability and structure. Homozygous or compound heterozygous inherited mutations leading to a severe decrease in GALC enzymatic activity have been associated with the onset of Krabbe disease, also known as "globoid cell leukodystrophy". Extensive...

The sensory motor cortex (SMC) plays a crucial role in motor function and is implicated in the pathophysiology of idiopathic Parkinson's disease (iPD). Asymmetric motor symptomatology in iPD suggests lateralized neurochemical alterations that may underlie disease progression and severity. Single-voxel in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy using PRESS (20 × 20 × 20 mm³) and MEGA-PRESS (30 × 30 × 30 mm3) sequences were performed on bilateral SMC in 25 iPD patients and 23 healthy controls...

Biological phenotypes emerge from complex interactions across molecular layers. Yet, data-driven approaches to infer these regulatory networks have primarily focused on single-omic studies, overlooking inter-layer regulatory relationships. To address these limitations, we developed MINIE, a computational method that integrates multi-omic data from bulk metabolomics and single-cell transcriptomics through a Bayesian regression approach that explicitly models the timescale separation between...

Chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) declines in ageing and neurodegenerative diseases. Loss of CMA in neurons leads to neurodegeneration and behavioural changes in mice but the role of CMA in neuronal physiology is largely unknown. Here we show that CMA deficiency causes neuronal hyperactivity, increased seizure susceptibility and disrupted calcium homeostasis. Pre-synaptic neurotransmitter release and NMDA receptor-mediated transmission were enhanced in CMA-deficient females, whereas males...

Liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and subsequent liquid-gel/solid transition are considered common aggregation mechanisms of proteins linked to neurodegenerative diseases. α-synuclein (α-syn), the main factor in Parkinson's disease pathology, has been reported to undergo LLPS, thereby accelerating aggregate formation. However, the precise molecular events involved in the early stages of α-syn aggregation remain controversial. In this study, we show that α-syn aggregation is promoted by...

Age and APOE ε4 are major risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD), while sex differences exist in disease prevalence and progression. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) proteomics can provide additional insights into brain aging and AD. To examine proteomic changes due to age, sex and apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 along with amyloid status before clinical AD occurs, we profiled 6,175 proteins in the CSF from 994 cognitively normal individuals aged 43-91 years. We identified and replicated 2,172...

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Mitochondrial control of cell death is of central importance to disease mechanisms from cancer to neurodegeneration. Mitochondrial anchored protein ligase (MAPL) is an outer mitochondrial membrane small ubiquitin-like modifier ligase that is a key determinant of cell survival, yet how MAPL controls the fate of this process remains unclear. Combining genome-wide functional genetic screening and cell biological approaches, we found that MAPL induces pyroptosis through an inflammatory pathway...

As Alzheimer's disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However, despite aging being the primary risk factor for AD, it remains unclear whether men and women differ in the extent of brain decline with age. Using 12,638 longitudinal brain MRIs from 4,726 participants aged 17 to 95 y across 14 cohorts, we examined sex differences in structural brain changes over time, controlling for differences in head size. Men...

Alzheimer's disease (AD)-the leading cause of dementia-has no cure, inadequate treatment options, and a limited understanding of prevention measures. We have previously shown that perinatal dietary supplementation with the nutrient choline ameliorates cognitive deficits and reduces amyloidosis across the brain in App^(NL-G-F) AD model mice. Here, we analyzed transcriptomic abnormalities in these mice and tested the hypothesis that they may be attenuated by perinatal choline supplementation...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia. Current treatments for AD are inadequate, and there is a need to design preventive strategies that would improve the resistance or resilience to AD pathology. Because aberrant brain DNA methylation (DNAm) is associated with hallmarks of AD, we tested the hypothesis that a nutritional approach using choline, an essential nutrient and methyl donor, would modulate DNAm to ameliorate AD pathologies. Previous studies showed that perinatal...

While preclinical studies suggest that Phosphodiesterase 5 (PDE5) inhibition may reduce cognitive impairment, findings from observational studies on whether PDE5 inhibitors reduce Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk have been inconsistent. We performed a two-sample cis-Mendelian Randomisation (MR) analysis to estimate the causal effect of PDE5 inhibition on AD risk. The analysis was performed across four different genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of AD to enhance reliability through...

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, the effects of which can be slowed down by an early and correct diagnosis. Greater diagnostic accuracy depends on a better understanding of the disease. In this regard, electroencephalography is a promising low-cost tool to explore brain activity and support the diagnosis of AD. When analyzing EEG signals, age is a factor that is not usually taken into account despite being one of the main risk factors. In this work,...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting millions worldwide, and with advancements in the medical field, Anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies (AA mAbs) targeting amyloid-β have emerged as potential disease-modifying agents altering AD pathology. This scoping review mapped the characteristics, patterns, and gaps in clinical trials investigating the efficacy and safety of AA mAbs in AD treatments, with focus on cognitive, functional, biochemical, imaging, and...

Low bone mass is frequently observed in Alzheimer's disease (AD), yet the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we demonstrate that sensory nerves constitute a critical component of the skeletal stem cell (SSC) niche. Deletion of the neurotrophin receptor p75NTR in neurons or sensory-specific cells, but not in osteogenic or sympathetic cells, resulted in reduced sensory innervation, disrupted SSC homeostasis, and significant bone loss. Although a cell-intrinsic role of...

Age-related proteinopathies, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, are driven by toxic accumulation of misfolded and intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) that overwhelm cellular proteostasis. The proteasome clears these proteins, but its failure in disease remains unclear. We engineered a Caenorhabditis elegans model with a hyperactive 20S proteasome (α3ΔN) for selective 20S activation. α3ΔN markedly enhanced IDP and misfolded protein degradation, reduced oxidative damage, and...

Decomposing behavior into elementary components remains a central challenge in computational neuroethology. The current standard in laboratory animals involves multi-view video tracking, which, while providing unparalleled access to full-body kinematics, imposes environmental constraints, is data-intensive, and has limited scalability. We present an alternative approach using inertial sensors, which capture high-resolution, environment-independent, compact 3D kinematic data, and are commonly...

Impairments of locus coeruleus (LC) are implicated in anxiety/depression and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Increases in cytosolic noradrenaline (NA) concentration and monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) activity initiate the LC impairment through production of NA metabolite, 3,4-dihydroxyphenyl-glycolaldehyde (DOPEGAL), by MAO-A. However, how NA accumulates in soma/dendritic cytosol of LC neurons has never been addressed despite the fact that NA is virtually absent in cytosol while NA is produced...

The functional difference between the two catalytic subunits, α1 and α2, of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) complexes remains elusive. Herein, we report that AMPKα2 specifically transduces amino acid insufficiency signals to protein synthesis. Low amino acid levels, high protein levels, and reduced phosphorylation of AMPKα threonine 172 (p-T172) are observed in blood samples in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) from a cohort of 1,000,000 Chinese individuals. Loss of α2, but not α1,...