Blood Test May Be Able To Detect Parkinson’s Disease In Early Stages, Study Finds

Parkinson’s News Today (4/18, Shapiro) reported that “scientists have developed a blood test to detect Parkinson’s disease in its very early stages, before a person experiences the first symptoms that would normally prompt a Parkinson’s diagnosis, a study showed.” Researchers developed a diagnostic test to measure the ratio between two types of transfer RNA fragments (tRFs) that can “accurately distinguish between people with presymptomatic Parkinson’s and those without it.” Researchers believe that “alterations in tRFs may reflect disease-related changes, and as such, they could have value as diagnostic biomarkers for conditions such as Parkinson’s.” They noted that “patients with Parkinson’s-related gene mutations also had higher blood RGTTCRA-tRFs/MT-tRFs ratios than people with the same mutations who didn’t show any symptoms.” The study was published in Nature Aging.