The cause of dopaminergic cell death in the substantia nigra of patients with Parkinson’s disease is unknown”: thus begins the Lancet paper published by Shapira et al. in 1989. Thirty-four years later, while this statement remains largely true, substantial advances have been made in this field. Crucially, much of this progress can be traced back to Shapira et al.’s discovery of a potential link between mitochondrial complex I deficiency and Parkinson disease.
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