Detecting Parkinson’s disease decades before symptoms appear | The Senior | October 17, 2023 - video Dailymotion

The Senior

Tell-tale signs of Parkinson's disease can be detected 20-30 years before symptoms appear, The Florey and Austin Health researchers have shown.   Footage courtesy The Florey

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00:00 So Parkinson's disease manifests itself as motor dysfunction, and we associate this disease

00:06 with the elderly.

00:07 This motor dysfunction is caused by a loss of specific neuronal cells within the brain,

00:13 and this neuronal loss occurs over a period of decades.

00:17 Our long-term goal is to identify people who are earlier, and with the prospect of opening

00:23 up treatment windows.

00:25 Our recent study published in Neurology offers us the opportunity to see that this is possible.

00:31 The study using PET imaging, positron emission tomography imaging, was able to demonstrate

00:36 that this neuronal loss occurs over a 33-year window, and that at time of diagnosis, this

00:42 is 20 years into the course of this disease, so the neuronal loss has been occurring for

00:47 quite a long time.

00:48 At the time of diagnosis, 85% of these neurons are already dead.

00:53 Now, this presents a major problem for us who are trying to identify new treatments.

00:58 I mean, it's very difficult to revive dead cells.

01:02 So ideally, we need to be able to identify people much earlier in the disease course

01:08 so that treatments can truly protect neurons.

01:12 So having identified that there is a 20-year window where this neuronal loss is occurring

01:16 on, this represents both an opportunity and a challenge.

01:19 The challenge is that, by and large, these people do not have any clinical symptoms.

01:24 But it's also an opportunity because if we can identify people, then we have holds out

01:28 the prospect that we can prevent the disease.

01:30 (upbeat music)

01:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Detecting Parkinson’s disease decades before symptoms appear | The Senior | October 17, 2023

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