A new way of diagnosing prion disease may also help in other diseases, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Prions are misfolded proteins that can infect us and cause our normal proteins to fold incorrectly also, and they can be found in the skin, a new study reports. Ted Dawson, a Parkinson disease expert at Johns Hopkins, says this misfolded protein etiology is also seen in this much more common neurological disease. 

Dawson: It's a real frame shift in the way we think about Parkinson's. There's been this notion and it stems from the prion field. That synuclein, you've got normal synuclein and you've got abnormal synuclein, which causes Parkinson. And that abnormal synuclein like a prion makes the normal synuclein misfold and it's that abnormal structure, the misfolded synuclein that causes Parkinson's disease.    :33

Both cause diseases that affect the brain, Dawson says, and facilitating diagnosis will enable more research on interventions. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.