June 19, 2024 – A blood test could tell which patients are most likely to develop Parkinson’s disease up to 7 years before the beginning of major symptoms, a new study suggests.
The search for a test to diagnose Parkinson’s reached a milestone recently with the arrival of new type of test, hailed as potential game-changer because of their ability to be used as a diagnostic tool.
However, these tests rely on cerebrospinal fluid, have certain other limitations and haven't previously been sufficiently linked to the underlying disease, said study author Michael Bartl, MD, of the Department of Neurology at the University Medical Center Goettingen, Germany.
"This is a big step because for the first time we are working with peripheral fluids and have a test that can predict something in an objective way," he said. "Our panel of proteins is also more dynamic and involves the pathophysiology."
The study was published online June 18 in the journal Nature Communications.
Discovery and Validation Phases
The model researchers created was able to identify 100% of the patients with Parkinson's disease and predict with 79% accuracy which patients with a particular sleep disorder that has been linked to neurological diseases would develop Parkinson’s up to 7 years before the onset of motor symptoms.
"We know that [this] sleep disorder is a strong predictor of the disease and we wanted to see if maybe there is something in common," Bartl said, referring to what’s known as pre-motor-isolated REM sleep behavior disorder. "And to our surprise, they had a lot in common with the patients with Parkinson's. It's not just that they are at risk, but they already have blood that indicates the pathological processes in Parkinson's disease have already taken place."
'Amazing Study'
Reached for comment, Chan-Hyun Na, PhD, of the Department of Neurology at the Institute for Cell Engineering, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, said, "this is quite an amazing study because diagnosis of Parkinson's disease using biomarkers is actually quite challenging, especially compared to other diseases."
"My lab and my collaborators have been working on discovering Parkinson's biomarkers using cerebral spinal fluid, but we found it is quite challenging," he said. "But what [these researchers] found is they could discover some biomarkers from serum. This is much easier to get samples from patients and less invasive.”
"Blood tests for Parkinson's for diagnosis and prediction remain a massive unmet need," Ray Chaudhuri, MD, professor of neurology/movement disorders at King's College Hospital and King's College London and medical director of the Parkinson Foundation International Centre of Excellence at King's College, said in a statement.
If the study’s results can be replicated through further research, these tests could be “invaluable,” he said. "Questions, however, remain about the ethics of predictive diagnosis in relation to proper counseling as well as absence, currently, of any disease-modifying treatment."
