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It has been hypothesized that idiopathic parkinsonism might be due to age-related attrition of dopamine neurons occurring long after an initial acute episode. We present evidence against this hypothesis, based on our finding of at least six times as many HLA-DR-positive microglia phagocytosing dopamine neurons in parkinsonian brains as in control brains. This difference indicates an active pathological process.
McGeer et al. (Sat,) studied this question.