Parkinson's Disease is a Th 17 dominant autoimmune disorder against accumulated alpha synuclein

http://arxiv-web3.library.cornell.edu/pdf/1403.3256.pdf

(Very technical report. Girija would like your assessment of this. Madelyn)

Very interesting. PD does seem to follow some similar pathways to autoimmune diseases. For example tumor necrosis factor (TNF) is elevated in PD, as it also is in most autoimmune diseases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I would like to see what Girlja says about this also...it seems compelling, from my layperson's standpoint, but I don't really understand what he means when he says we need to "develop a tolerance for alpha-synuclein"...? Does that mean a vaccine, or something else? If there is some underlying pathogen, wouldn't it need to be treated accordingly?

I also am not sure about how it could autoimmune if most people who get PD are elderly-do we see increased rates of autoimmunity in general in the senior population? As one neuro bluntly told us "If we lived long enough, everyone would get PD".