SNCA and Parkinson disease: Aging is the leading risk factor for the development Parkinson's disease (PD), a most prevalent central nervous system (CNS) movement disorder characterized by the progressive and selective degeneration of midbrain dopaminergic neurons (mDA) of the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) and their terminals in the striatum, the presence of intracellular aggregated inclusions containing α-synuclein (α-Syn), called Lewy bodies (LB), and an abnormal activation of the astroglial cell compartment (Hornykiewicz, 1993; Di Monte and Langston, 1995; Langston et al., 1998, 1999; Table 1).