Progressive supranuclear palsy and tau hyperphosphorylation in a patient with a C212Y parkin mutation

Autosomal recessive-juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP) is one of the most common forms of familial Parkinson's disease (PD) and is related to mutations in the Park-2 gene, encoding for a protein ligase of ubiquitin, parkin. Different mutations located along the parkin gene have been observed in different AR-JP affected families, possibly interfering with the normal function of parkin and the proteasome system. Two cases of patients with AR-JP have been recently described presenting different homo- and heterozygous parkin mutations and limited tau pathology. We report here the case of a patient with clinical and pathological findings compatible with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), carrier of a single, heterozygous mutation of the parkin gene, and homozygous for the H1/H1 haplotype in the tau gene. Abnormal tau hyperphosphorylation has been observed in our patient brain samples, suggesting that a partial deficit of parkin, a protein with ubiquitin-ligase function, may trigger tau pathology in individuals with molecular genetic risk factors.