Comparative whole transcriptome analysis of Parkinson's disease focusing on the efficacy of zonisamide

Interindividual variations in responsiveness to zonisamide in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) have been observed in clinical settings. To decipher the molecular mechanisms determining the efficacy of zonisamide, we conducted whole transcriptome sequencing analysis of patients with PD.

We selected 23 super-responders (SRs) and 25 non-responders (NRs) to zonisamide from patients with PD who had participated in a previous clinical trial for the approval of zonisamide for the treatment of 'wearing-off'. Whole transcriptome analysis of peripheral blood was conducted on samples taken before and 12 weeks after zonisamide treatment. We performed differential gene expression analysis to compare between the SRs and NRs at each time point.

Differentially expressed genes in the pre-treatment samples were significantly enriched for glutamatergic synapses and insulin-like growth factor binding (P_adj=7.8 × 10^-3 and 0.029, respectively). The gene sets associated with these functions changed more dynamically by treatment in SRs than NRs (p=7.2 × 10^-3 and 8.2 × 10^-3, respectively).

Our results suggest that the efficacy of zonisamide in PD patients is associated with glutamate-related synaptic modulation and p53-mediated dopaminergic neural loss. Their transcriptomic differences could be captured before treatment, which would lead to the realisation of future personalised treatment.