Parkinson’s Disease Can Now Be Detected Through the Skin

livemint.com:

Debi Lucas had a tremor in her arm. Her feet froze when she tried to walk and she fell into her coffee table, busting her lip. She went to a neurologist who thought she had Parkinson’s disease.

Doctors normally diagnose the neurodegenerative condition by symptoms. Lucas, 59, had them. But the neurologist, Dr.

Jason Crowell, couldn’t be sure. The symptoms might be related to a traumatic brain injury Lucas suffered in a car accident decades earlier, he thought. Or they might be from her medications.

To find an answer, Crowell turned to a new test: a skin biopsy that can detect an abnormal protein people with Parkinson’s have inside their nerves. He took samples of skin near her ankle, knee and shoulder and sent them to a lab. The results confirmed that Lucas has Parkinson’s.

The diagnosis was scary, but Lucas finally knew what was causing her symptoms. “I was glad to have a name on it," she said. The test sped her diagnosis, said Crowell, a movement disorders neurologist at the Norton Neuroscience Institute in Louisville, Ky.

“It just gives me more confidence," he said. The skin test is an important part of progress researchers are making against Parkinson’s, the second-most common age-related neurodegenerative condition, which is on the rise and a major driver of disability, dementia and death. The test Lucas received, made by CND Life Sciences, a medical technology company in Scottsdale, Ariz., is one of a few in use or development to allow doctors to diagnose Parkinson’s based on biology rather than symptoms that can take years to appear.