A Unifying Role for Prions in Neurodegenerative Diseases

摘要

Many neurodegenerative diseases- including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)-share two remarkable characteristics. The first is that more than 80% of cases are sporadic. The second is that although many of the disease-specific mutant proteins are expressed in embryogenesis, the inherited forms of these neurodegenerative diseases are late-onset.