Tag Archives: biomarkers

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Can Parkinson’s be predicted using Artificial Intelligence (AI)??

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Today we take a look at a review of other papers (a way to get a paper published without having to do any actual research yourself, and the drudge work can be delegated to grad students, someone once told me), but nevertheless, there’s much to be learned from looking at the big picture instead of focusing on individual studies, so we’ll forge ahead. Next article will be on rehabilitation therapies that address motor and cognitive issues in PD.

Interestingly enough, this article comes from Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science – not the first place you’d probably look for information n Parkinson’s (PD). And, unless you’re a computer science major or are developing applications using AI, I wouldn’t recommend looking this one up.

Most of the studies reviewed used various techniques to analyze datasets of speech recordings, and tried to differentiate between “healthy”people and people with PD. Some of the approaches were fairly accurate (in the 90% plus range) while others were not that much better than reliance on the four cardinal symptoms to be observed clinically (resting tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia and postural instability). 

This one will either be good reading before going to sleep (unless you’re into neural networks and Bayesian prediction) or a good way to induce a headache. The authors do call for more research (naturally) in this area, especially in regard to developing biomarkers using either neuro-imaging or biofluids. And they note that fine-tuning of biomarkers must be  done, so that there is an acceptable balance between false positives and false negatives in predicting whether a person will likely get PD in the near or distant future.

Citation for this is:

A comparative and comprehensive study of prediction of Parkinson’s Disease, (2021) Pandi, V., et al., Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Systems, vol. 23, No. 2, September 21, pp. 1748-1760.

It’s an open access article, so if you are interested in computer systems. go ahead and search for it. 

 

Parkinson's, Research , , Leave a comment

Not a cure, but a biomarker

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A biomarker for Parkinson’s?  Maybe… (If you don’t have a free ResearchGate account, yu might not be able t see this link):

A blood marker for Parkinson’s Disease: Neuronal exosome-derived α-synuclein

This isn’t in print yet, so I’ll just quote frm the abstract:

18 To date, no reliable clinically applicable biomarker has been established for Parkinson’s
19 disease (PD). Our results indicate that a long hoped blood test for Parkinson’s disease may
20 be realized. We here assess the potential of pathological α-synuclein originating from
21 neuron-derived exosomes from blood plasma as a possible biomarker. Following the
22 isolation of neuron-derived exosomes from plasma of PD patients and non-PD individuals
23 immunoblot analyses were performed to detect exosomal α-synuclein. Under native
24 conditions significantly increased signals of disease-associated α-synuclein forms in neuron25 derived exosomes were measured in all individuals with PD and clearly distinguished PD
26 samples from controls. By performing a protein misfolding cyclic amplification assay these
27 aggregates could be amplified and seeding could be demonstrated. Moreover, the
28 aggregates exhibited β-sheet-rich structures and showed a fibrillary appearance. Our study
29 demonstrates that the detection of pathological α-synuclein conformers from neuron-derived
30 exosomes from plasma samples has the potential of a promising blood-biomarker of PD.

Exosomes are small bundles of proteins  enclosed by a membrane (if I understand it correctly)(feel free to correct me- the Wikipedia article hd a note saying that it was too technical for most readers – and I agree).

Exosomes contain material from the cells from which they originated, so might be used as biomarkers. Obviously, it will take a while to fund the research and develop some way to determine how far along the way to developing PD someone is.  But the sooner a person can deal with it, the better the opportunity to live well with it. I look forward to the development of biomarkers that will help predict who might get Parkinson’s, so those folks can take preventive action.

I am fortunate that my symptoms did not appear in the usual sequence,and that I had DBS early after diagnosis, have had an outstanding medical team looking out for me and working with me, have a strong local community supporting people with Parkinson’s, and have a care partner who makes sure that my diet is full of organic foods, produce, and as few highly processed foods as possible. And I get lots of exercise, considering that I’m not athletic and I am not into weightlifting or bodybuilding.

Lucky me.

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In search of a biomarker for Parkinson’s Disease

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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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