Dopamine is missing from the Parkinson's brain

The research record

This is the project's file for this landmark, as written and checked. Sources are listed at the end; anything not yet confirmed is marked "Not yet verified".

Who

Herbert Ehringer and Oleh Hornykiewicz, Pharmacological Institute of the University of Vienna.

What happened

They measured noradrenaline and dopamine in frozen post-mortem human brain and found dopamine markedly reduced in the striatum, the brain's movement hub, in people with Parkinson's. A memorial account says they analysed 31 brains in the first year (from early 1959), including normal adults, fetuses, parkinsonism and other degenerative diseases such as Huntington's. They were prompted by Bertler and Rosengren's 1959 finding that dopamine is concentrated in the striatum.

Why it moved us toward a cure

It identified the failing system: the dopamine pathway from the substantia nigra to the striatum. Every later attempt to protect or restore neurons targets this pathway.

Outcome

Advanced. It is the founding fact of Parkinson's biology, though the disease is now known to involve far more than dopamine.

Sources

• Ehringer & Hornykiewicz, "Verteilung von Noradrenalin und Dopamin (3-Hydroxytyramin) im Gehirn des Menschen und ihr Verhalten bei Erkrankungen des extrapyramidalen Systems", Klin Wochenschr 1960;38:1236–9 (PubMed 13726012; DOI); English translation in Parkinsonism Relat Disord 1998;4:53–57 (PubMed 18591088, DOI 10.1016/S1353-8020(98)00012-1)
• Rajput & Kish, Hornykiewicz obituary, Mov Disord 2020;35:1916–1921 (PMC7756272) (31 brains in a year)
• Tribute, J Parkinsons Dis 2020
• Not yet verified: the number of Parkinson's brains and the dopamine figures (neither the German paper nor its translation has an abstract, and the translation could not be opened); Bertler and Rosengren's 1959 paper (named in the obituary only).