Now a simple blood test could detect Parkinson’s disease long before symptoms emerge

Researchers in Israel have succeeded in developing a simple and “cost-effective” blood test that is capable of detecting Parkinson’s disease long before symptoms emerge, according to a study.

The study, published in the journal Nature Aging on Friday, is the latest to look for blood biomarkers that could be early warning signs of Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 10 million people worldwide and occurs when the brain slowly stops producing the chemical dopamine in areas that control movement and balance.
Parkinson’s causes tremors, stiffness, slow movement, and cognitive impairment in patients and has no cure yet.

Most people are diagnosed based on these symptoms, but by then more than 60 per cent of dopamine neurons have degraded, which is why researchers are still hunting for means to diagnose it earlier.

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In the study, Israeli researchers compared blood and brain tissue data of Parkinson’s patients with that of healthy beings.

They focused on transfer RNA fragments (tRFs), which appear to play a role in neurological issues, and detected two key biomarkers; one that’s linked to Parkinson’s and another to the progression of the disease. “By focusing on tRFs, we’ve opened a new window into the molecular changes that occur in the earliest stages of the disease,” said Hermona Soreq, one of the study’s authors and a professor of molecular neuroscience at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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The test “offers a highly accurate, non-invasive, rapid, and affordable diagnostic tool, providing hope for early interventions and treatments that could change the course of the disease”.
The test uses the same PCR technology used during the pandemic to confirm Covid cases and works by amplifying the genetic material being targeted, which allows it to be detected.

“This discovery represents a major advancement in our understanding of Parkinson’s disease and offers a simple, minimally invasive blood test as a tool for early diagnosis,” said Prof Hermona Soreq of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who supervised the study. “By focusing on tRFs, we’ve opened a new window into the molecular changes that occur in the earliest stages of the disease.”

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The study was led by PhD student Nimrod Madrer under the supervision of Prof Soreq at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences and the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, at the Hebrew University, in collaboration with Dr Iddo Paldor from the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, and Dr Eyal Soreq from the University of Surrey and Imperial College London.

“More work is needed to continue to test and validate this possible test, especially understanding how it can distinguish between other conditions that have similar early signs to Parkinson’s,” Prof David Dexter, director of research at Parkinson’s UK, who was not involved in the research,told Euronews.

Another EU-funded study, published last year, had identified eight proteins in the blood that could help identify Parkinson’s patients up to seven years before major symptoms appear.