Skin isn’t the only place to sample to make a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:08 — 1.6MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Skin biopsies can diagnose both Parkinson’s disease and other neurological conditions called prion diseases, recent studies show. Ted Dawson, Johns Hopkins Parkinson’s expert, predicts that soon, blood will supplant skin for detection of these incorrectly folded proteins.

Dawson: We also know that you can detect it in the blood. What that means is we're going to be able to do blood tests. Part of your physical examination and blood draw by your primary care doctor, they're going to be submitting it for assays for these misfolded proteins before you even manifest the disease. And there'll be a day when there's treatments that you could take to prevent the disease from ever occurring.         :30

Dawson notes that there are several promising drug candidates in development already to help, some being tested in animal models. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.