Pesticides Exposure and Dopaminergic Neurodegeneration

Pesticides are widely used in the world for agriculture and industry. A lot of pesticide residues are observed in our air, soil, and water, which has been regarded as serious environmental contaminations. More and more researches begin to pay attention to the potential toxic effects of pesticides on human health. Till now, it has been confirmed that pesticides exposures are associated with carcinogenicity, neurotoxicity, pulmonotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, developmental toxicity, and metabolic toxicity. Pesticides exposure might play an important role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson disease and Alzheimer disease. In this review, we focused on the relationship between the main commonly used pesticides and dopaminergic neurodegeneration. The main mechanism of neurotoxicity induced by pesticides exposure were also discussed. Additionally, it is known that the main histological hallmark of dopamine neurodegeneration is the presence of α-synuclein aggregates called Lewy bodies. Therefore, we also discussed the linkages between pesticide exposure and synuclein protein aggregation, which would be helpful to understand the etiology of neurodegeneration.