There is a press release from La Trobe about this here;
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/artic...for-parkinsons.
I can't find any technical details about what they actually measured in terms of "hyperactive mitochondria".
In my view it is encouraging but a limitation of it is that it only seems to apply to people who have already been diagnosed with PD so in that sense it is confirmatory. Of course this could lead to new therapeutic insights.
A longitudinal study would be valuable - seeing if what they have measured is predictive of PD in a large cohort before it has been diagnosed by other methods though this would take some time and would be expensive.