Volume 14 Issue 1, January 2018

Parkinson disease (PD) affects up to 10 million people worldwide and is clinically diagnosed. Molecular phenotyping of patient samples might help to corroborate diagnosis, and a new study suggests that blood-based gene expression profiling might distinguish between patients with PD and those without. However, experience suggests that additional replication is needed.

Cognitive ageing is a complex public health, social and economic problem that demands a bold response — a paradigm shift that leads science and society to view brain health across the lifespan of every individual as critically important. Implementation of 'Life's Simple 7' is a laudable step in that direction.

Two decades after antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) were initially identified as agents capable of modulating RNA processing and protein expression, the first antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) therapies have now been approved for the treatment of neurological disease. Here, Rinaldi and Wood discuss our current understanding of ASO pharmacology, and the future prospects for ASO-mediated treatment of neurological disease

Amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau come in a variety of forms and assembly states, not all of which are toxic. In this Review, Polanco and colleagues explain the clinical and therapeutic implications of this new understanding while highlighting the physiological and pathogenetic roles of Aβ and tau.

Idiopathic rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavioural disorder (RBD) is now recognized as an early marker of α-synucleinopathies. Here, Högl and colleagues review potential biomarkers for RBD and summarize the evidence for a prodromal stage, which might enable disease-modifying intervention. In light of these advances, they reconceptualize idiopathic RBD as isolated RBD.

To coincide with the 200th anniversary of the publication of An Essay on the Shaking Palsy by James Parkinson, Goedert and Compston explore the origins of the eponym 'Parkinson's disease'. Although Jean-Martin Charcot is often credited with introducing the name in the 1880s, it can actually be traced back to an 1865 publication by William Rutherford Sanders.