Parkinson Disease: The Role Of The Immune System
The role of the immune system in Parkinson disease
Last semester, I took a class with Professor Jia Shi, Pathophysiology of Disease, and we covered the role of the immune system in many diseases and in our body. This phenomenal system, the immune system, defends us when we are awake and asleep. It works around the clock without rest to keep all the invaders away like bacteria and viruses. Scientifically at the molecular level, there are proteins called Cytokines that are produced by the cells of the immune system in response to any invasion, to cause a major inflammation and recruit all the components and cells. However, this system can be disrupted by internal factors such as genome mutations or external factors, for example, …show more content…
As a result, many diseases are believed to be caused by the immune system. Constantly, the autoimmune diseases topic is a hot topic in research and the data available are simply overwhelming. A meta-analysis by Roy N Alcalay, MD, MS (2016), at the Department of Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center was established to confirm the connection between the previously mentioned Cytokines and Parkinson disease. Typically, a meta-analysis, which is a statistical method, is used to bring all the results that were obtained from different studies around a particular topic and try to find more useful data. Previous to Dr. Alcalay’s analysis, there were an impressive number of studies about Parkinson disease and the potential role of inflammation. These studies usually have two groups: the control group and the target group. The control group does not have PD and is used as a reference. On the other, the target group has PD. The whole sample, the control and target groups, will go through intensive lab tests to accurately measure Cytokines levels
Last semester, I took a class with Professor Jia Shi, Pathophysiology of Disease, and we covered the role of the immune system in many diseases and in our body. This phenomenal system, the immune system, defends us when we are awake and asleep. It works around the clock without rest to keep all the invaders away like bacteria and viruses. Scientifically at the molecular level, there are proteins called Cytokines that are produced by the cells of the immune system in response to any invasion, to cause a major inflammation and recruit all the components and cells. However, this system can be disrupted by internal factors such as genome mutations or external factors, for example, …show more content…
As a result, many diseases are believed to be caused by the immune system. Constantly, the autoimmune diseases topic is a hot topic in research and the data available are simply overwhelming. A meta-analysis by Roy N Alcalay, MD, MS (2016), at the Department of Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center was established to confirm the connection between the previously mentioned Cytokines and Parkinson disease. Typically, a meta-analysis, which is a statistical method, is used to bring all the results that were obtained from different studies around a particular topic and try to find more useful data. Previous to Dr. Alcalay’s analysis, there were an impressive number of studies about Parkinson disease and the potential role of inflammation. These studies usually have two groups: the control group and the target group. The control group does not have PD and is used as a reference. On the other, the target group has PD. The whole sample, the control and target groups, will go through intensive lab tests to accurately measure Cytokines levels