September 26, 2012 (whatever happened to this?)

With the newly developed method – this involves electrochemical analysis of 10 microliters of blood in just a few minutes – it is possible not only to see a clear difference between individuals with incipient Parkinson's disease and healthy controls but also to measure and establish the advance of the disease with great precision.

http://phys.org/news/2012-09-closer-...n-disease.html

I also found this dated March of 2015. I wonder why this isn't top priority, as it sure seems like a simple blood test to diagnose PD would speed up drug developments as a researcher could get fast real time feedback as to how their drug is working! If the density/quantity of alpha synuclein levels directly corresponds to PD this blood test would revolutionize PD diagnosis and research and would seem to minimize the placebo effect that is is strong in PD research! This needs to get fast track status and would be entirely safe as it's just a blood test! It's too bad PD patients aren't in charge of PD research! OK, I'll get off my soap box now.

Low cost, minimally invasive blood test with broad potential for future development

This technology is a simple, inexpensive method to diagnose PD or confirm a diagnosis, and has the potential to be further developed to monitor disease progression and the efficacy of novel therapies. Furthermore, because the technology identifies the pathways required for the immune response, it offers researchers new broad targets for drug discovery and facilitates the potential development of patient-specific molecules in a personalized medicine approach to treatment.

http://www.ibridgenetwork.org/columbia/ir_cu14042

I wonder if they have addressed false positives with this? We all know that people who have been diagnosed with PD and been taking PD drugs for years, usually decades, often have no evidence of alpha-synuclein clumps in their brains on autopsy, which means that they are definitively ruled out (post-mortem) as ever having had PD. Yet many people have these same alpha-syn clumps on autopsy and never had a symptom of PD while alive.

What if someone has the "PD blood marker" with this test but no symptoms of PD? That could sure label someone in a bad way. Imagine having a routine blood test and being erroneously told you had PD!

On the flip side, I guess that's a lot better than being told you have PD and you really do

The studies to test this of course need to be double blind tests where the lab folks have no idea who is who and all they do is measure alpha nuclein and come up with a decision as to whether the patient has PD or not. This data would then result in accuracy rate based on actual patient data. If I understand the data so far, folks that have excess alpha nuclein often will end up with PD but just don't know it yet. This data (once accuracy is determined) will allow folks to be treated before symptoms even occur! I think this is the way things will be in the near future!

So that raises another question for me....with what exactly are folks going to be treated "before symptoms even occur"? nothing slows or even halts progression, so all a test would do is tell people they are going to get PD at some point, but there are no treatments yet to keep that from happening. Is this good?

To me, this raises the same issues as genetic testing. Ex: some people want to know whether they have a 25% or higher risk for Alz. (fill in the blank disease), others don't. If there is no cure, and nothing we know of that can prevent it, many people would find that knowledge a burden. It could ruin their lives before they even had symptoms! I am not sure this is an improvement.

Additionally, I fear these types of blood tests could be used by insurance companies (such as disability, long-term care, life), maybe employers and others to weed out those at risk of getting XYZ disease, or charge them more for this or that before someone even has any symptoms. What if your blood test shows you will get PD, and you start getting charged much more for many things, maybe even discriminated against, but you don't develop symptoms for 25 years. How would society protect against this?

Yikes! So many questions. I just want to be done with PD any way that happens is OK with me. I think accurate blood testing would speed research!