Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases, and its etiology and pathogenesis are not completely clear. About 10% of patients with PD have a family history thereof. Since the discovery of genetic defects as a causative factor of PD in recent years, the importance of genetic factors in the pathogenesis of PD has attracted much attention. So far, more than 20 disease-causing genes and 90 independent, risk-associatedvariants have been identified. Patients with an onset age less than 50 years are defined as  early-onset PD (EOPD), and the correlation with genetic factors increases with the decrease of onset age. Mutations in parkin are identified in about 40%–50% of patients with autosomal recessive early-onset PD (AREP), and in about 10%–20% of sporadic EOPD.A series of retrospective studies have been conducted on parkin-associated PD at home and abroad, revealing that it is clinically characterized by an early age of onset, slow progression, common presentation as dystonia, relatively low risk of cognitive impairment, excellent response to levodopa, and frequent emergenceof dyskinesias. However, in a subgroup of these patients, there is some variance in the onset age, rate of disease progression, and drug efficacy. There is a lack of prospective studies in which the specific mechanism of EOPD is explored.

The Chinese Parkinson 's Disease with Parkin Variants Registry (CPD-parkinR) is a national, multicenter study launched by Xiangya hospital, Central South University.CPD-parkinR will provide a user-friendly, online, encrypted registration platform for authorized personnel. It includes information on demographics, clinical characteristics, environmental factors, family history, brain imaging, genomics, treatments, neuropsychological evaluation, and life quality assessments. CPD-parkinR focuses on environmental factors, clinical characteristics (motor symptoms, non-motor symptoms, motor complications, etc.), natural history of disease, radiomics, genomics, metagenomics, and molecular markers of parkin-associated PD in China.

Xiangya Hospital was founded in 1906 and is a Grade III, Level A hospital under the direct control of the National Health Commission. It is affiliated to Central South University, a university under direct control of the Ministry of Education. Xiangya Hospital is an important center of clinical diagnosis and treatment, medical education, and scientific and technological innovation. In the early 20th century, Yale alumni created the Yale-China Association. In 1906, Edward H. Hume (1876-1957) was appointed by association to establish Yale Hospital in Changsha. Eight years later, the Yale Hospital was renamed “Xiangya Hospital” when the Hunan Provincial Government entrusted the Yuqun Society and Yale-China Association to start Xiangya Medical School, the first higher medical education institution jointly established by China and the United States.

The Subspecialty of Neurodegenerative and Genetic Diseases, Department of Neurology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, is mainly engaged in clinical and basic research of neurodegenerative and genetic diseases such as PD, Alzheimer's disease (AD), essential tremor (ET), motor neuron disease (MND), Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA), Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, Hereditary spastic paraplegia (SPG), Meuronal intranuclear inclusion disease (NIID), and Huntington's disease (HD). Academic leaders and PI: Beisha Tang, Zhuohua Zhang, Xinxiang Yan, Lu Shen, Hong Jiang, Zhiquan Yang, Weihua Liao, Shuo Hu, Jifeng Guo, Junling Wang, Kai Yuan, Jian Qiu, Zhonghua Hu, Jinchen Li, etc.