What Is Lewy Body?
1. Lewy Bodies
In medical terms, the word body sometimes refers to any kind of substance or form of matter. For example, the phrase foreign body is used to mean any object inside a person that is not supposed to be there. A Lewy body is a piece of alpha-synuclein protein that accumulates inside the brain for no apparent reason.
A healthy brain needs alpha-synuclein proteins in order for its neurons to communicate with each other. However, in patients with LBD, these proteins clump into bodies inside the cells, preventing them from functioning properly. Eventually, the Lewy bodies cause the neurons to die.
