Distinct biological underpinnings of Parkinson's disease motor subtypes: single-center study on pathway-stratified...

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by substantial clinical and genetic heterogeneity. The biological mechanisms underlying different clinical presentations remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate if distinct biological pathways, represented by pathway-specific polygenic risk scores (PRS's), differ between PD clinical subtypes.

The study included 799 PD patients classified into four empirical PD motor subtypes: tremor-dominant (TD) (n = 345), akinetic-rigid (AR) (n = 227), gait-difficulty (n = 82) and mixed (n = 145). Genotyping was performed using the Illumina NeuroChip array, with data imputed via the TOPMed Imputation Server. A total of 7,918,344 variants were included in the final analysis. Ten PRS's were constructed, including overall PD risk, adaptive immunity, alpha-synuclein, innate immunity, lysosomal, endocytic membrane trafficking, mitochondrial, microglial, monocyte, and Alzheimer's disease pathways. Linear regression models adjusted for age, sex, disease duration, and genetic principal components were used to compare PRS's between PD subtypes.

After correcting for multiple testing (P < 0.0125 considered significant), a significantly higher adaptive immunity PD PRS was observed for the AR subtype compared to other subtypes (β: 0.04, P = 0.011). Nominally significant (P < 0.05) associations included an increased overall PD PRS for the AR subtype (β: 0.18, P = 0.041) and a lower adaptive immunity PD PRS for the TD subtype (β: -0.03, P = 0.041).

Our findings suggest distinct genetic risk profiles across PD motor subtypes, particularly within immune-related pathways. These results support viewing PD as a syndrome driven by multiple distinct pathomechanisms, underscoring the need for subtype-specific biomarkers, more personalized clinical trial designs, and targeted therapeutic strategies in PD management.