Botulinum Neurotoxin and Parkinson’s Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, and is the second most frequently occurring of this type. The main motor symptoms of PD, such as bradykinesia, akinesia, rest tremor, rigidity, postural instability, and gait disorders, are caused by axonal degeneration of dopaminergic fibers in the striatum and subsequent or parallel loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta. In addition to these motor symptoms, patients with PD often experience non-motor symptoms, including autonomic dysfunction, olfactory deficits, cognitive decline, sleep disorders, and neuropsychiatric symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis.

The non-motor symptoms often appear years before the motor symptoms are first noticed, but they can become major problems for the patients and adversely affect quality of life. Medications used to treat both motor and non-motor symptoms in PD are often inadequately effective and can cause intolerable side effects.

Botulinum toxins, produced by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium botulinum, are among the most potent poisons present in nature. They inhibit the release of acetylcholine from the presynaptic terminal by affecting SNARE and SNAP proteins. In recent years botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) has been used for the treatment over 100 different medical indications. Many of the symptoms for which BoNT has been found to be effective occur in a variety of neurological disorders. Especially in Parkinson’s disease, BoNT has been successfully applied to treat various motor symptoms (i.e., limb, cervical, pharyngeal, oromandibular dystonia and rigidity, bruxism, blepharospasm and lid apraxia, dysphagia, hand and jaw tremor, camptocormia, freezing of gait) and non-motor symptoms (i.e., drooling and sialorrhea, seborrhea, hyperhidrosis), gastroenterological symptoms including constipation and overactive bladder, gynecological disorders, pain, and so on.

In this Special Issue, we ask experts to contribute manuscripts that examine the current therapeutic indications and effectiveness of BoNT in PD or respective animal models.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Wree
Dr. Veronica Alexandra Antipova
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxins is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.