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PARKINSON DISEASE

Clinical Parkinson disease subtyping does not predict pathology

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 15, pages 189–190 (2019)Cite this article

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Parkinson disease is a clinicopathological construct at a crossroads. A new study reinforces the prognostic value of subtypes, but its findings challenge the relevance of pathology to the clinical expression of disease as data-driven Parkinson disease subtypes did not match up with severity or distribution of Lewy or Alzheimer pathologies.

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Fig. 1: Current and ideal disease subtyping.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UC James J. and Joan A. Gardner Family Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute, Department of Neurology, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Alberto J. Espay

  2. Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Centre and the Edmond J. Safra Program in Parkinson’s Disease, Toronto Western Hospital, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Connie Marras

Authors
  1. Alberto J. Espay
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  2. Connie Marras
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Correspondence to Alberto J. Espay.

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Competing interests

A.J.E. has received grant support from the NIH, Great Lakes Neurotechnologies and the Michael J. Fox Foundation; personal compensation as a consultant/scientific advisory board member for Abbvie, Adamas, Acadia, Acorda, Neuroderm, Impax, Sunovion, Lundbeck, Osmotica Pharmaceutical and USWorldMeds; publishing royalties from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Cambridge University Press and Springer; and honoraria from USWorldMeds, Lundbeck, Acadia, Sunovion, the American Academy of Neurology and the Movement Disorders Society. C.M. has received grant support from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Parkinson Foundation (US), the International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society and the NIH, is a member of the scientific advisory board for the Michael J. Fox Foundation and has received honoraria for teaching from EMD Serono and speaking honoraria from Acorda Therapeutics.

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Espay, A.J., Marras, C. Clinical Parkinson disease subtyping does not predict pathology. Nat Rev Neurol 15, 189–190 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-019-0153-9

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