2023-06-26 16:00:00
Goettingen. Researchers at the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG) have taken an important step towards identifying pathologically altered prion proteins. The diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a brain disease that affects 150 to 180 people in Germany every year, is to be made easier by the newly developed methodology of the Göttingen physicians.
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The brain disease usually leads to death within a few months because there is currently no effective therapy. Drugs are only effective if the disease is detected early. But the diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be challenging: The symptoms of the disease are often similar to other neurodegenerative or inflammatory diseases of the brain. Another challenge is that up to now, a complicated procedure had to be used to remove cerebrospinal fluid from the lumbar vertebrae, which can be very uncomfortable for the patient. For a long time, scientists have been looking for other methods to detect the nervous disease.
UMG Göttingen: Diagnosis of brain disease via tear fluid
With the help of the new findings, a simpler diagnosis of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is now possible. Because the doctors were able to detect diseased prion proteins in the tear fluid of patients. Tear fluid, according to Dr. Inga Zerr, head of the prion research group in the Department of Neurology at the UMG Göttingen, “comparatively easy to collect and contains only a few disruptive factors, such as blood cells.”
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For the diagnosis, a strip of paper is first placed between the eyelid and the lower conjunctiva of a patient. The prion proteins in the liquid can then be enriched and detected using “Real Time Quaking-Induced Conversion”. Thanks to a revision of this common test method by the Göttingen researchers, even the smallest amounts of abnormal proteins can now be detected.
With their method, the physicians were able to correctly identify an illness in 16 of 19 patients with various forms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob. The test remained negative in 94 test persons who were healthy or suffered from other brain diseases.
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The UMG researchers are part of the National Reference Center for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (NRZ-TSE), which is responsible for monitoring and investigating Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease throughout Germany. Their findings, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, say they could also have implications for detecting Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.
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