The autonomic nervous system in the spreading of α-synuclein

At the heart of the PD disease process is the misfolding and propagation of the protein α-synuclein¹
The pathology typical of PD is first seen, within the brain, in the dorsal motor nucleus, and spreads upwards from there²
A milestone in understanding came in 2008, when Lewy body-like inclusions were observed in neurons that had been grafted (from foetal tissue) into the brains of patients with PD, 11–16 years after the grafts were performed¹
This observation was ground-breaking, because it suggested host-to-graft transmission of PD pathology¹