Preface

The year 2017 marked the 200th anniversary of the publication of James Parkinson’s Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which the condition that would later bear Parkinson’s name was first described in detail. In this work, Parkinson char­acterized six cases of patients that had developed a disorder of tremor, slowed movement, and gait disturbance, which he called “paralysis agitans.” Since this initial description, it has become clear that Parkinson’s disease in fact manifests with a wide variety of neuropsychiatric, cognitive, autonomic, and other nonmo­tor symptoms, in addition to the characteristic movement disorder that Parkinson described, and that there is probably a spectrum of disease consisting of as yet poorly defined clinical and pathological subtypes. While we know that the neuro­nal protein α-synuclein is central to Parkinson’s disease pathology, and that the movement disorder results largely from loss of dopaminergic neurons of the sub­stantia nigra pars compacta, our understanding of disease mechanisms remains limited, and as such no disease-modifying treatments have been developed. CONTINUE READING…..