Mitochondrial biogenesis, telomere length and cellular senescence in Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia

Muhammad Asghar, Amani Odeh, Ahmad Jouni Fattahi, Alexandra Edwards Henriksson, Aurelie Miglar, Shervin Khosousi, Per Svenningsson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Progressive age is the single major risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. Cellular aging markers during Parkinson’s disease (PD) have been implicated in previous studies, however the majority of studies have investigated the association of individual cellular aging hallmarks with PD but not jointly. Here, we have studied the association of PD with three aging hallmarks (telomere attrition, mitochondrial dysfunction, and cellular senescence) in blood and the brain tissue. Our results show that PD patients had 20% lower mitochondrial DNA copies but 26% longer telomeres in blood compared to controls. Moreover, telomere length in blood was positively correlated with medication (Levodopa Equivalent Daily Dose, LEDD) and disease duration. Similar results were found in brain tissue, where patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD), Parkinson’s disease dementia (PDD) and Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) showed (46–95%) depleted mtDNA copies, but (7–9%) longer telomeres compared to controls. In addition, patients had lower mitochondrial biogenesis (PGC-1α and PGC-1β) and higher load of a cellular senescence marker in postmortem prefrontal cortex tissue, with DLB showing the highest effect among the patient groups. Our results suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction (copy number and biogenesis) in blood might be a valuable marker to assess the risk of PD. However, further studies with larger sample size are needed to evaluate these findings.

Original languageEnglish
Article number17578
JournalScientific Reports
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 Oct 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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