Summary
This article traces developments in Lewy pathology since Fritz Heinrich Lewy’s 1912 discovery of the protein aggregates underlying Parkinson Disease (PD) in brain regions other than the substantia nigra. It was Konstantin Nikolaevich Tretiakoff who in 1919 found similar aggregates in the substantia nigra and named these after Lewy. In the 1990s α-synuclein was identified as the main constituent of the Lewy pathology. The aggregation α-synuclein is central to PD, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), and multiple system atrophy. α-synuclein pathology is now understood to originate in the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagal nerve and then to progresses into other brain regions including the substantia nigra later.
Reference
Goedert, M. Spillantini, MG. [and] Del Tredici, K. [et al] (2013). 100 years of Lewy pathology. Nature Reviews. Neurology, January 2013, Vol.9(1), pp.13-24. (Click here to view the PubMed abstract).
