Postmortem analysis of adrenal–medulla–to–caudate autograft in a patient with parkinson's disease

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Abstract
A 53‐year‐old physician who had a 10‐year history of progressive idiopathic parkinsonism survived for 4 months after autologous adrenal‐medulla‐to‐right‐caudate autograft but he received little clinical benefit. A small number of chromaffin cells in the graft site survived; they expressed neurofilament proteins and chromogranin A, but scant tyrosine hydroxylase. The striatum on both sides showed almost complete loss of [3H]mazindol binding to dopamine‐uptake sites; the density of dopamine receptors was decreased adjacent to the transplant but increased rostral to the transplant. These results demonstrate that autografted chromaffin cells can survive for 4 months after transplantation and that related changes in dopamine receptors can be quantified.