Researchers in the US have developed a test which can detect the abnormal clumping of alpha-synuclein proteins that occurs in the brains of people with Parkinson’s.
Scientists from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the second largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School in the US, and Harvard’s Wyss Institute discovered that their test was able to spot very small amounts of clumped alpha synuclein.
They believe that not only could this help diagnose Parkinson’s, but it could detect it at an earlier stage, before symptoms are present. The results have been published in their study Toward the Quantification of [Alpha]-Synuclein Aggregates with Digital Seed Amplification Assays in American scientific journal PNAS.
The corresponding author of the study, David Walt PhD, of the Department of Pathology at the Brigham and a Core Faculty member at the Wyss Institute, said: “This work is an important step toward our goal to develop a method to detect and quantify a key marker of Parkinson’s disease to help clinicians identify patients much earlier, and thus keep Parkinson’s and related neurodegenerative disorders much more effectively at bay.”
Parkinson’s Europe is sharing this article for information purposes only; it does not represent Parkinson’s Europe’s views and is not an endorsement by Parkinson’s Europe of any particular treatments, therapies or products.
