Is it possible to detect Parkinson’s sooner?
<p>Parkinson’s disease has long been a source of confusion, misinformation and misunderstanding, with many believing it to simply be “the shakes”. But there is so much more to this cruel and complex disease.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.parkinsons.org.au/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Parkinson’s Australia</span></strong></a>, there are currently around 70,000 people affected by the disease in this country alone. The average age of diagnosis is 65 years, but for some, the dreaded news can come much earlier.</p>
<p>“My mother had Parkinson’s,” Over60 community member Pauline Marrone explains. “She was first diagnosed at 43 years old and passed away at 73. The last 10 years of her life, once she became bedridden, were terrible to watch, particularly the involuntary jumping of her legs after she had taken her medication. My dad was her carer. He passed away in his sleep, in bed next to her, and she was unable to do anything but lay there next to him until help arrived. It was very traumatic.”</p>
<p>Not only is its cause currently almost impossible to pinpoint, it’s also notoriously difficult to diagnose, as there are currently no laboratory tests available – diagnosis is all down to examinations conducted by neurologists.</p>
<p>To understand a bit more about the disease, and learn about an exciting breakthrough that may lead to the development of an effective treatment, we spoke to Associate Professor Antony Cooper. As head of the neuroscience division at the <a href="https://www.garvan.org.au" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Garvan Institute of Medical Research</span></strong></a>, his work focuses on a number of neurodegenerative diseases – primarily, Parkinson’s disease.</p>
<p>“We’re looking at two things,” he explains. “One, to try and understand what are the early events that cause or contribute to Parkinson’s, because if we can identify them, it gives us a way of trying to find a therapy that would stop this disease. And two, to search for biomarkers (indicators of disease).</p>
<p>“In Parkinson’s, you start to get neurons that either degenerate (which means they die) or simply aren’t working, which is really the same outcome – in that different parts ofyour brain stops working properly.</p>
<p>“With one part of your brain not working it produces specific symptoms but then the problem “spreads” to another brain region, causing that region to fail which results in a new set of symptoms. As time goes on, you get more and more brain regions affected, and therefore you gain new symptoms and the symptoms you already have get worse. This is disease progression.”</p>
<p>There may be hope, however, in slowing the progression of the disease. Current therapies only treat certain symptoms rather than tackling the disease as a whole. Associate Professor Cooper believes his team’s research could lead to the development of a treatment, which would get to the root of the problem and prevent the disease getting worse.</p>
<p>“There’s a protein called alpha-synuclein which is quite central to the disease. It’s recently been proposed that the progression of the disease – that is, the timing pattern in which parts of the brain fail – is that this protein might be moving from one brain cell to another, where it triggers the next cell (which was healthy) to fail or degenerate.</p>
<p>“We’re also looking at a second Parkinson’s disease gene called PARK9 (or ATP13A2), which is involved with how the cell copes with toxic levels of alpha-synuclein. It protects the cell against rising levels of alpha-synuclein and also impacts how that alpha-synuclein is perhaps transmitted from one cell to another. A number of us at the Garvan are investigating if we could interfere with that transmission of alpha-synuclein between cells, we might be able to stop the disease getting worse, which would be fantastic.”</p>
<p>Therapy will be most beneficial if we can give it to people very early in the disease course.</p>
<p>“Part of our problem is that by the time some people are diagnosed, they’ve already got a resting tremor in their hand, and by that stage, you’re probably in the mid-course of the disease,” he explains. “So, we need to be able to diagnose people much earlier. And that’s pretty hard, because the really early symptoms don’t necessarily suggest Parkinson’s, so we need earlier indicators – biomarkers. Some people may have had the disease for five years before they began to show symptoms. So, the earlier we can detect it, if we have a therapy, we could give those to people before they even have symptoms, and we may stop the progression really early on. Pre-symptomatic diagnosis, that’s our goal.”</p>
<p>Associate Professor Cooper hopes that, one day, if the search for biomarkers is successful, diagnosing early Parkinson’s will be as simple as a trip to the doctor. However, without proper funding, diagnosis will remain a struggle.</p>
<p>“If you wonder whether you’re diabetic or have high blood glucose, you go and have a blood test where they take a measurement and say, ‘you’ve got 5, that’s healthy,’ or ‘you’ve got 7, that’s a concern’. That’s a biomarker for diabetes. So, we’re looking for biomarkers that we can measure so that, maybe at the age of 50, you can stop by your GP and as part of your blood test they screen you for Parkinson’s and say, “‘hey, your markers indicate very early stages of Parkinson’, we’ve got this therapy,’ or ‘we’re going to monitor you for another year and see if it gets worse,’ and ideally, we’d be able to significantly slow the disease and add an extra five or more years of being symptom free.”</p>
<p>If you’re interested in finding out more information about Parkinson’s, why not consider attending a free seminar at the Garvan Institute on Tuesday April 11 from 10am to 12pm? <a href="https://www.garvan.org.au/get-involved/public-seminars" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>Click here</strong></span></a> to register now. </p>
<p>If you would like to help Associate Professor Antony Cooper and his team at the Garvan Institute as they continue their research to find an early diagnosis test for Parkinson’s, <a href="https://www.giving.garvan.org.au/donate-now" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong>click here</strong></span></a> to find out how you can donate now.</p>
<p>For more information or to support Garvan’s research into Parkinson’s, please visit <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://garvan.org.au/parkinsons" target="_blank">garvan.org.au/parkinsons</a></strong></span>.</p>
<p>THIS IS SPONSORED CONTENT BROUGHT TO YOU IN CONJUNCTION WITH <a href="https://www.garvan.org.au" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">GARVAN INSTITUTE</span></strong></a>. </p>
