mtDNA haplogroup K and lower risk of Parkinson's in Italians

See also this other recent study on the same topic.

Eur J Hum Genet. 2005 Apr 13; [Epub ahead of print]

Mitochondrial DNA haplogroup K is associated with a lower risk of Parkinson's disease in Italians.


Ghezzi D et al.

It has been proposed that European mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroups J and K, and their shared 10398G single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the ND3 gene, are protective from Parkinson's disease (PD). We evaluated the distribution of the different mtDNA haplogroups in a large cohort of 620 Italian patients with adult-onset (>50, <65>50year old males. In spite of the common 10398G SNP, haplogroups J and K belong to widely diverging mitochondrial clades, a consideration that may explain the different results obtained for the two haplogroups in our cohorts. Our study suggests that haplogroup K might confer a lower risk for PD in Italians, corroborating the idea that the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation pathway is involved in the susceptibility to idiopathic PD.

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