Lewy bodies and neurites, the pathological signatures found in the central nervous system of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, are primarily composed of aggregated alpha-synuclein (aSyn). The observation that α-syn aggregates are also found in the enteric nervous system has prompted IMPRIND Partner CNRS to develop a diagnostic procedure based on the detection of pathological α-syn in gastrointestinal biopsies. The methods, published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, is based on seeding of monomeric α-syn by aggregates present in affected cells. IMPRIND Partner CNRS shows that the method he implemented is capable of detecting α-syn aggregates in routine gastrointestinal biopsies. Rectum biopsies appear not to contain sufficient amounts of aggregated α-syn to detect seeded assembly while biopsies from antrum and sigmoid do. The study further shows diagnostic potential as seeding is detected in a patient biopsy taken 10 years ahead of PD diagnosis.

Tags: highlight