This report was pretty darn technical and way above my head, but from what I understood:

• • • Lewy bodies are formed by the aggregation of alpha-synuclein proteins long before loss of dopaminergic neurons becomes apparent
    • Alpha-synuclein proteins appear to affect the immune system to produce an inflammatory response in the body (and brain)
    • The inflammatory factor interleukin-1-Beta was found at significantly higher levels in Parkinson’s patients’ blood samples

This particular study can be found on PubMedCentral. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the link (or WordPress lost it for me). I Blame The Parkinson’s©

Howsomever, as Pogo the Possum (or Albert the Alligator) might have said, here is an article on biomarkers, published even more recently:

Blood biomarkers in Parkinson’s cluster analysis and prognosis   

 “Baseline clinical subtyping identified a pro‐inflammatory biomarker profile significantly associated with a severe motor/nonmotor disease phenotype, lending biological validity to subtyping approaches. No blood biomarker predicted motor or nonmotor prognosis.  (Mov Disord. 2020 Feb; 35(2): 279–287. Published online 2019 Nov 6. doi: 10.1002/mds.27888)

In other words, inflammation seems to be associated with PD, but the blood biomarkers they used didn’t correlate to progression of the disease.

In the meanwhile, we’re still searching…

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