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Parkinson’s disease is a pathology that is detected when the characteristic symptoms appear. But tomorrow, a simple blood test may allow early identification of the disease. This is revealed by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).
A neurodegenerative disease often diagnosed too late
Parkinson’s disease is a disease that affects more than 160,000 people in France. Each year, approximately 25,000 new cases are diagnosed. It is a pathology that progressively disables the patient and manifests itself in tremors and rigid limbs. The stakes of scientific research are crucial, because there is currently no treatment to cure this disease. However, to find a therapeutic outcome, it is necessary to better understand and characterize the warning signs of the pathology.
However, Parkinson’s disease is often detected once the specific symptoms are present, which already testifies to significant lesions in the brain. Indeed, the disease evolves in silence for years before manifesting itself. This is explained by Sabrina Boulet and Florence Fauvelle, the two researchers at the Grenoble Institute of Neurosciences, “There are no curative treatments for the disease because, when it is expressed, the damage is already too advanced. To develop such drugs, one must understand the very first events that cause the disease”. This was the initial goal of their research project, but it eventually revealed things the scientists hadn’t expected.
What is the blood test for early identification of Parkinson’s disease?
For the conduct of their study, the researchers worked on “animal models that specifically mimic” the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers found changes in the metabolome, the same as those found in patients who suffer from an advanced stage of Parkinson’s disease. The metabolome is made up of metabolites, which are organic substances in a biological medium. As the Inserm press release explains, the metabolome “provides an accurate reflection of the biological processes taking place” in a person’s body. It turns out that the physiological changes found in blood samples, the biomarkers, are just as present at the early stage of the disease as at the time of diagnosis.
For researchers,the identification of metabolomic characteristics common to all these samples has contributed to defining a biomarker comprising several specific compounds, which makes it possible to discriminate between people with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and people without it, with an accuracy of 82.6%.”
These results are so encouraging that they filed a patent. If the blood testwas validated, one can imagine that this biomarker could be used in routine clinical practice, to diagnose people suspected of being affected or who have a high risk of developing the disease”.