Stanley Fahn Lecture 2005: The staging procedure for the inclusion body pathology associated with sporadic Parkinson's disease reconsidered.

The synucleinopathy known as sporadic Parkinson's disease (PD) is a multisystem disorder that severely damages predisposed nerve cell types in circumscribed regions of the human nervous system. A recent staging procedure for the inclusion body pathology associated with PD proposes that, in the brain, the pathological process (formation of proteinaceous intraneuronal Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites) begins at two sites and continues in a topographically predictable sequence in six stages, during which components of the olfactory, autonomic, limbic, and somatomotor systems become progressively involved. In stages 1 to 2, the Lewy body pathology is confined to the medulla oblongata/pontine tegme…