In Parkinson’s Disease (PD), the disease course is often summarized as depicted in panel A. Patients develop autonomic symptoms such as constipation and REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) 10-20 years before diagnosis. This trajectory is however only representative of around 1/3 of PD patients, but 2/3 or more of dementia with Lewy bodies patients follow this trajectory. B. The other 2/3 of PD patients typically follow the disease course depicted in panel B. They have mild or no obvious non-motor symptoms before diagnosis. Yet, most of these patients will develop RBD, autonomic problems and other symptoms after diagnosis.

file_download Download in HQ

Related content

image Image
Trajectories of neurodegeneration in body- and brain-first subtypes of Lewy body disease

In brain-first patients (bottom panel), the dopamine system starts to degenerate early

23.01.2025 Parkinson’s Disease
image Image Characteristics of proposed body-first and brain-first subtypes of PD. Arrows indicate the direction of spread of α-synuclein pathology. In body-first Parkinson disease (left), the first α-synuclein aggregation occurs in the gut and propagates through the sympathetic nervous system to the sympathetic trunk and heart, and via the vagus nerve to the brainstem. Autonomic dysfunction and REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) are prodromal features. In brain-first PD (right), the initial α-synuclein pathology enters via the olfactory bulb (OB) and spreads to the amygdala and nigrostriatal dopamine system. The pathology then descends through the brainstem and RBD and dysautonomia generally develop after the onset of parkinsonism. During the later disease stages, nearly all patients have widespread pathology in these systems and their symptomatology therefore converges.
Body-first vs brain-first Lewy Body Disease

Characteristics of proposed body-first and brain-first subtypes of Parkinson’s disease

23.01.2025 Parkinson’s Disease
description Article
Body-First and Brain-First Parkinson’s Disease

This article reviews the body-first and brain-first model of Lewy body disease (BvB model), a theoretical framework that synthesises findings from clinical studies, epidemiology, animal models, and postmortem studies.

20.01.2025 Parkinson’s Disease