Mechanisms of aluminium neurotoxicity in oxidative stress-induced ...

INTRODUCTION
may clarify why many neuropathologic studies did not conform to the six-stage Braak
system and why some patients present obvious non-DAergic features while others have
little difficulty with these over a prolonged disease course.
The connection between PD and the FeBAD hypothesis
Also, Barlow and colleagues recently explored the possibility to link PD with the
fetal basis of adult disease (FeBAD) hypothesis. They proposed that environmental
stressors encountered very early in life (in utero or during the perinatal period) may
decrease the number of DAergic neurons making the nigrostriatal system vulnerable to
subsequent insults or to a failure of normal compensatory mechanisms (Figure 16;
Barlow et al. 2007). Indeed, even if PD is considered as an age-related disorder, the
biology of this disease may start decades prior to the critical treshold of 60% neuronal
loss or clinical manifestations.
Figure 16: The multiple hit model of PD (Barlow et al. 2007)
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