Gene expression changes across multiple regions of the Parkinson’s disease brain

We have used microarrays to analyze gene expression in Parkinson’s disease (PD). We used four different brain regions, including two that are relatively affected in PD (striatum and cortex) and two that are relatively spared (cerebellum and medulla). We show that while differences between brain regions are strong, expression profile differences between PD and controls are much more modest and that genome-wide significant differences are restricted to the striatum and cerebral cortex. RNA (aRNA) was generated from 500ng of total RNA from the medulla (n=15 control brains, n=14 PD brains), striatum (n=15 control brains, n = 15 PD brains), frontal cortex (n=15 control brains, n = 11 PD brains) and cerebellum (n = 14 control brains, n=15 PD brains).