The researchers now plan to create a simpler test, where a drop of blood on a card can be posted to the lab, to see if it can predict Parkinson’s even earlier.
Prof David Dexter, research director at Parkinson’s UK, which helped fund the study, said: “The findings add to an exciting flurry of recent activity towards finding a simple way to test for and measure Parkinson’s.”
The test may be able to tell the difference between Parkinson’s and other similar conditions, he added.
Prof Ray Chaudhuri, professor of movement disorders and neurology, at King’s College Hospital and King’s College London, said blood tests for Parkinson’s diagnosis and prediction were “a massive unmet need” – but questioned whether the move was ethical given there was no cure.
Prof Michele Vendruscolo, professor of biophysics, at the University of Cambridge, said the test could be performed with equipment already in major hospitals and help recruit people at risk of the disease for clinical trials.
“They could be used to monitor the efficacy of experimental therapeutics,” he said.
The research is published in Nature Communications, external.
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