According to a publication from the BBC, researchers with King’s College London believe they’ve identified early biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease that could help physicians predict who will be affected up to 15 or 20 years before their first symptoms appear.
About Parkinson’s Disease
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder of the nervous system affecting an estimated 10 million people worldwide. 60,000 Americans are diagnosed each year — and despite advances in treatment that control some of the worst symptoms, no cure exists.
In individuals with Parkinson’s, certain neurons (nerve cells that make up the central nervous system) in the brain gradually waste and die off. Some of the most commonly reported symptoms are tremors of various limbs (often hands), muscle stiffness, and neurological problems affecting speech or memory.
Scientists believe changes in brain chemistry are responsible for most symptoms. Dopamine, an important neurotransmitter, has long been known to be related — individuals with Parkinson’s have characteristically low levels. Existing treatments for the condition are focused primarily on restoring these low dopamine levels.
Neurotransmitters as Biomarkers
In a study published in Lancet Neurology, King’s College London researchers proposed that serotonin (another neurotransmitter) levels could be used to predict the development of Parkinson’s up to two decades before observable symptoms appeared.
The team, headed by lead author Professor Marios Politis, observed 14 individuals from Southern Europe with rare mutations to a gene strongly linked to the development of Parkinson’s (SNCA). Half of the participants had already been diagnosed with the illness, while the other half had yet to show symptoms.
Brain scans of the study participants were compared against the scans of 65 other confirmed Parkinson’s patients, as well as 25 healthy individuals as a control. Scientists noted that changes to the serotonin system (linked to mood, appetite, cognition, movement, and other important functions) were observable in patients as early as their 20s and 30s.
Though the findings are encouraging, and could one day be used to develop new therapies that slow (or even halt) the progression of Parkinson’s, the small scale of the study has some concerned that reported findings won’t scale to larger studies.
If serotonin levels are found to be a reliable precursor to Parkinson’s, however, it would be the earliest form of reliable detection we have developed so far. Since early detection and aggressive treatment yield the best outcomes for Parkinson’s patients, such a finding could mean significant improvement to patients’ quality of care. It’s likely that future studies will be conducted on the serotonin system to explore this link — though the imaging method employed by the King’s College researchers is highly specialized and limited in availability, which could limit the adoption of the technique in the near future.
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