Shared alterations in the human brain transcriptome during adult aging and in Parkinson's disease

Aging-related biomolecular changes in the human brain are thought to be associated with an increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, aging and Parkinson’s disease (PD) share various molecular hallmarks, including a gradual decline in dopamine synthesis and increased levels of deleted mitochondrial DNA. While some specific mechanistic links between brain aging and PD have been proposed and investigated previously, systematic analyses of shared molecular alterations at a genome-scale level are required to obtain a better understanding of the affected cellular processes and their interrelations.
We present a joint analysis of high-throughput brain transcriptomics data from PD patients and unaffected individuals from different adult age groups using a statistical meta-analysis and a recently published pathway and network analysis approach.
Our analyses provide statistical evidence for specific functional associations between molecular network changes in PD and aging, identify new significant joint pathway deregulations and suggest mechanistic explanations for the observed age-dependence of PD risk.