DNA damage in neurodegenerative diseases

•Oxidative DNA damage is one of the earliest detectable events in the neurodegenerative process.•The mitochondrial DNA is more vulnerable to oxidative attack than the nuclear DNA.•Cytogenetic damage has been largely documented in Alzheimer's disease patients.•The question of whether DNA damage is cause or consequence of neurodegeneration is still open.•Increasing evidence links DNA damage and repair with epigenetic phenomena.

Following the observation of increased oxidative DNA damage in nuclear and mitochondrial DNA extracted from post-mortem brain regions of patients affected by neurodegenerative diseases, the last years of the previous century and the first decade of the present one have been largely dedicated to the search of markers of DNA damage in neuronal samples and peripheral tissues of patients in early, intermediate or late stages of neurodegeneration. Those studies allowed to demonstrate that oxidative DNA damage is one of the earliest detectable events in neurodegeneration, but also revealed cytogenetic damage in neurodegenerative conditions, such as for example a tendency towards chromosome 21 malsegregation in Alzheimer's disease. As it happens for many neurodegenerative risk factors the question of whether DNA damage is cause or consequence of the neurodegenerative process is still open, and probably both is true. The research interest in markers of oxidative stress was shifted, in recent years, towards the search of epigenetic biomarkers of neurodegenerative disorders, following the accumulating evidence of a substantial contribution of epigenetic mechanisms to learning, memory processes, behavioural disorders and neurodegeneration. Increasing evidence is however linking DNA damage and repair with epigenetic phenomena, thereby opening the way to a very attractive and timely research topic in neurodegenerative diseases. We will address those issues in the context of Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which represent three of the most common neurodegenerative pathologies in humans.