Apoptosis and Oxidative Stress in Neurodegenerative Diseases

Neurodegenerative disorders affect almost 30 million individuals leading to disability and death. These disorders are characterized by pathological changes in disease-specific areas of the brain and degeneration of distinct neuron subsets. Despite the differences in clinical manifestations and neur onal vulnerability, the pathological processes appear similar, suggesting common neurodegenerative pathways. Apoptosis seems to play a key role in the progression of several neurologic disorders like Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis as demonstrated by studies on animal models and cell lines. On the other hand, research on human brains reported contradictory results. However, many dying neurons have been detected in brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, and these conditions are often associated with significant cell loss accompanied by typical morphological features of apoptosis such as chromatin condensation, DNA fragmentation, and activation of cysteine-proteases, caspases. Cell death and neurodegenerative conditions have been linked to oxidative stress and imbalance between generation of free radicals and antioxidant defenses. Multiple sclerosis, stroke, and neurodegenerative diseases have been associated with reactive oxygen species and nitric oxide. Here we present an overview of the involvement of neuronal apoptosis and oxidative stress in the most important neurodegenerative diseases, mainly focusing the attention on several genetic disorders, discussing the interaction between primary genetic abnormalities and the apoptotic pathways.