A team led by Annika Kluge from the University of Kiel has succeeded in diagnosing Parkinson’s using blood samples. The study was published in the journal »Brain«. According to the authors, based on the results, a blood test for the diagnosis of the nervous disease could be developed.
So far there is no way to detect Parkinson’s in time. When the characteristic movement disorders appear, a large proportion of the dopamine-producing neurons in the substantia nigra have died. ‘It’s a dilemma. Because of course you want to discover the disease in the early stages and develop measures to prevent patients from becoming stiff, shaking and slowing down,” says Kluge.
In the disease, also known as “shaking paralysis”, misfolded alpha-synuclein proteins are deposited in the nerve cells and thus contribute to their death. But how are these pathological molecules to be detected in living humans? The team has developed an elegant method to do just that.
»I can practically look into the brain when I examine these vesicles«(Annika Kluge, neurologist)
Vesicles are small sacs found inside neurons. With their help, messengers and other substances can be transported from the inside of the cell to the outside. Such transport sacs enter the bloodstream and contain the proteins of their original cell. “That means I can look into the brain when I examine these vesicles,” says the physician Kluge. In the first step, the researchers looked for the pathologically altered alpha-synuclein in the vesicles. In order to be able to detect the protein, however, they had to multiply it in a further step: “The really nice thing about our work is that we managed to multiply these misfolded alpha-synucleins from Parkinson’s patients,” says Kluge.