Affiliations: [a] Department of Neurology, The Affiliated Huaian First People’s Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Huaian, Jiangsu, China
| [b] Division of Neuropathology, Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Correspondence to: Liam Chen, Division of Neuropathology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. Tel.: +1 612 301 2648; E-mail: llchen@umn.edu.
Note: [1] Present address: Division of Neuropathology, Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Abstract: Orthostatic hypotension (OH) is a common non-motor symptom in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and is linked with increased mortality risk among the elderly. Although the locus coeruleus (LC) is the major source of noradrenaline (NA) modulation in the brain, its role in the pathogenesis of OH in PD remains largely elusive. Here we examined 44 well characterized postmortem brains of PD patients and available clinical data to explore the relationship between OH and LC pathology in PD. Our results failed to indicate that the LC pathology as well as the substantia nigra pathology were robustly associated with the presence of OH in PD patients, suggesting targeting LC norepinephrinergic system alone may not be sufficient to treat OH in PD.
Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, locus coeruleus, substantia nigra, orthostatic
hypotension, norepinephrinergic
