SNCA and encephalitis: In this regard, it has been recently described that neuronal expression of alpha-synuclein, a protein closely linked to PD (Stefanis, 2012), inhibits RNA viral infections in the central nervous system, suggesting that acute onset of parkinsonian features during WNV encephalitis could likely be due to viral-induced cell death of dopaminergic neurons that resulted in an acute loss of dopamine signaling (Beatman et al., 2015).