Skin Test Helps Diagnose Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases

Skin biopsies can be used to detect elevated levels of abnormal proteins found in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases and may shed new light on both.

Alzheimer's disease is ranked as the sixth leading cause of death in the USA, and 5.4 million Americans are currently diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Parkinson's disease affects one million Americans, with at least 60,000 new cases reported annually each year.

Scientists at the University of San Luis Potosi (Mexico) took skin biopsies from 20 people with Alzheimer's disease, 16 with Parkinson's disease and 17 with dementia caused by other conditions and compared them to 12 healthy people in the same age group. They tested these skin samples to see if specific types of altered proteins were found, ones that indicate a person has Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. As compared to healthy patients and ones with dementia caused by other conditions, those with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's had seven times higher levels of the tau protein. People with Parkinson's also had an eight times higher level of alpha-synuclein protein than the healthy control group.

Ildefonso Rodriguez-Leyva, MD, the study author, said, “Until now, pathological confirmation was not possible without a brain biopsy, so these diseases often go unrecognized until after the disease has progressed. We hypothesized that since skin has the same origin as brain tissue while in the embryo that they might also show the same abnormal proteins. This new test offers a potential biomarker that may allow doctors to identify and diagnose these diseases earlier on. More studies are needed to confirm these results, but the findings are exciting because we could potentially begin to use skin biopsies from living patients to study and learn more about these diseases. This also means tissue will be much more readily available for scientists to study. This procedure could be used to study not only Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, but also other neurodegenerative diseases.”

The study will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting, to be held April 18–25, 2015, in Washington DC (USA).

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University of San Luis Potosi