The regulators of the abnormal protein in Parkinson’s revealed with a test that would arrive within a few days, with a diagnostic accuracy of 99%. Not the only one
If you have recently been diagnosed with a suspect Parkinson’s disease now to get one confirmation (and soon perhaps also for a prognosis) it could be sufficient to go, without having eaten or drunk for 1 hour and smoked for 4, to an outpatient clinic for the treatment of this pathology where saliva swab similar to those we have become accustomed to with Covid. An answer may arrive within a few days an accuracy diagnostics that promises to be even del 99%.
The patients
what says a study just published on Annals of Neurology by researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome directed by Professor Alfredo Berardelli, professor at the Capitoline university and President of the Italian Society of Neurology. The study, which was also attended by researchers from the IRCCS Neuromed of Pozzilli and the Campus Biomedico University of Rome, compared for two years 80 newly diagnosed patientsthe so-called patients again, with 62 healthy subjects of equal characteristics in terms of age and gender. Being a predominantly male disease, there were more than twice as many males as females and the general average age was 73 and a half years. The healthy subjects were selected by excluding diseases that could alter salivary production or neuropsychiatric pathologies treated with therapies which, being able to induce drug parkinsonisms, would have compromised the interpretation of the results. To confirm the diagnosis, the de novo parkinsonians were all subjected to motor and cognitive re-evaluations with the MDS-UPDRS, NMSS, MoCA, etc. scales.
New markers
Based on previous profique experiments we searched in saliva other distinctive biochemical markers of the disease Parkinson’s disease in addition to alpha-synuclein, already known as the main protein involved – says Giorgio Vivacqua, first author of the study and professor at the Campus Biomedico University -. We were thus able to study the salivary markers of other processes involved such as protein aggregation, inflammation and cellular degradation (the so-called autophagy): the tau-phosphorylated proteins and MAP-LC3beta and the cytokine TNFalpha. It was precisely the latter two that proved to be much higher in those suffering from Parkinson’s disease and in particular the MAP-LC3beta resulted inversely proportional to the non-motor symptoms of the disease such as constipation, sleep disturbances, depression, etc.
In the future also the prognosis?
Apart from this last inverse correlation, in general the laboratory and clinical indices were independent of each other and further studies are needed to understand to what extent in the early stages salivary biomarkers can distinguish true Parkinson’s disease from atypical parkinsonisms. Of course oligomeric alpha-synuclein is the marker of excellence which, with a sensitivity of almost 100% and a specificity of 98.39%, can distinguish those in the initial stage of the disease from those who are not affected, with an overall diagnostic accuracy of 99%. We have already started a long-term study – concludes Professor Berardelli – to verify how much the new components detected in saliva can influence, individually or in combination, the oligomeric alpha-synuclein which is the main actor of the disease, so as to identify the different clinical trajectories that characterize the different pathological progression of various patients. It would also give the identified salivary markers a prognostic significance never had before.
November 24, 2022 (change November 24, 2022 | 18:50)
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