Comparison analysis of gene expression patterns between sporadic Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease

Sporadic Alzheimer's (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are late-onset neurodegenerative diseases with tremendous impact on lives of affected individuals. There is a great probability of developing concurrent Parkinsonism in AD and vice-versa than would be predicted by independent prevalence of each disease. We hypothesize that in sporadic AD as well as PD a combination of environmental effects and gene expression may affect specific brain areas leading to neurodegeneration. We profiled gene expression of AD compared to PD and age matched controls post-mortem in the hippocampus, the gyrus-frontalis-medius (Gfm) and the cerebellum using Gene-Chip microarray (Affymetrix) and quantitative-real-time-RT-PCR. Twelve genes altered in similar manner in AD and PD, while four genes showed differential expression profiles between AD and PD in different brain regions (cannabinoid-receptor-2, Histone-cluster-1-H3e, nicotinic-cholinergic-receptor-alpha6 and beta-site-APP-cleaving enzyme-1). Knowledge of selective gene expression profile can lead to better understanding of disease pathology and development of specific diagnosis and effective therapy.