Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease :Neurodegenerative Disorders Due to Brain Antioxidant System Deficiency ?

Parkinson disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the two most common types of adult chronic degenerative disorders of the central nervous system are characterized by degeneration of certain populations of neurons with relative sparing of other groups of nerve cells (1). Dysfunction of at-risk neurons is associated with several types of cytoskeletal pathology including neurofibrillary tangles (NFT), granulovacuolar degeneration, senile plaques, in AD and Lewy bodies in PD. Dysfunction and death of neurons lead to the clinical syndromes of PD and AD. The bradykinesia and rigidity of PD are associated with lesions in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic systems, whereas the dementia of AD is attributed to abnormalities of neurons in monoaminergic brainstem nuclei,cholinergic basal forebrain , and neuronal populations within amygdala, hippocampus and neocortex (1).