A study by the University of Nagoya has shown that general health checkups may be effective at spotting early signs of Parkinson’s disease (PD) in advance.
Specifically, the prodromal stage shows sex differences, with the markers for males being decreased cholesterol and haematocrit (the percentage of red blood cells in blood) levels, while in females it is increased blood pressure. PD is the second most common disease affecting the nervous system after Alzheimer’s disease, is caused by a deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine. By the stage where sufferers experience motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness, bradykinesia (slowness of movement), more than half of all dopaminergic neurons have been lost. Postural instability occurs in the late stage. Several processes have been implicated in PD, such as mitochondrial dysfunction, defective protein clearance mechanisms, and neuroinflammation, but it is not clear how these factors interact.
Prior studies have shown that non-motor symptoms including constipation, rapid eye movement sleep behaviour disorder, impairment of sense of smell, and depression, emerge in patients with PD 10 to 20 years before the onset of motor symptoms – meaning that PD may be detectable in advance with other measures.
“If we can detect biological changes in the patients’ bodies well before the onset of the motor symptoms, we can start medical treatments in an early stage,” said Prof Masahisa Katsuno of the Graduate School of Medicine at Nagoya University.
The team used health checkup data from 22 male and 23 female patients with PD, dating to before they were diagnosed with the disease. They supplemented this with data from 60 male and 60 female healthy individuals who had checkup data for at least four years.The checkup data was compared between healthy individuals and PD patients to establish a baseline, and then were examined for longitudinal changes prior to the onset of PD. They found that in the premotor stage, blood pressure increased in females, while in males total and low-density cholesterol levels and haematocrit decreased.
“In this study, we found that blood pressure, haematocrit, and serum cholesterol levels are potential biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease before the onset of its motor symptoms,” said Prof Katsuno. “This finding indicates that general health checkups can help detect early signs of developing Parkinson’s disease.” Based on the findings, the team is now working to identify individuals at risk of developing PD in an attempt to forestall the development of their disease.
Source: Medical Xpress
Journal information: Katsunori Yokoi et al. Longitudinal analysis of premotor anthropometric and serological markers of Parkinson’s disease, Scientific Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-77415-1
