Test could detect Parkinson’s disease 10 years before diagnosis: biggest advance since the ‘60s

A new test that detects the “Parkinson’s Protein” has been lauded as the catalyst that could revolutionise the diagnosis and treatment of the disease.

Joanne Colquhoun, of Sydney, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease a short time after also being diagnosed with breast cancer. Picture: Britta Campion/The Australian

A new test which can detect the “Parkinson’s Protein”, which previously could only be found post-mortem, has been lauded as the key to revolutionising the diagnosis and treatment of the neurological condition.

Scientists have discovered ­abnormal -alpha-synuclein – the protein present in most people with Parkinson’s – could be ­detected through a α-synuclein seeding amplification assay with spinal fluid samples to a 93 per cent accuracy.

The finding will help earlier identify the disorder, which is currently diagnosed through mental and physical evaluations.

Alpha-synuclein protein, the “Parkinson’s protein”, can damage neurons by misfolding and clumping. The test, the α-synuclein seeding amplification assay, involves preparing spinal fluid samples with a fluorescing agent and adding the normal alpha-­synuclein where if clumps form, the dye will light up.

Early-onset Parkinson’s patient Christine Jeyachandran, who first suspected something was wrong when she dropped a coffee mug in 2013, said she would have benefited from an earlier diagnosis.

Christine Jeyachandran manages her Parkinson's with medication and strength-based exercise. Picture: Supplied

In 2014, the then 37-year-old had just moved her family from Sydney to Peru for a decade-long humanitarian mission when she noticed her left hand was shaking.

After a series of appointments and MRIs, she visited a neurologist who told her in Spanish: “From the moment you walked into the room I knew you had ­Parkinson’s”.

“My left hand didn’t swing when I walked and my left foot particularly made a clapping noise when it hit the ground,” Mrs Jeyachandran said.

Christine Jeyachandran the week she got diagnosed. Picture: Supplied

She described the moments after her appointment with her three young children waiting in the foyer of the hospital.

“My husband and I cried … My twins were just eight and my boy was just three so they were completely oblivious,” she said.

The 46-year-old said her symptoms appeared between ­November and December 2013 and that she had received her ­diagnosis the following January. However she noticed small tremors a few years earlier.

“I know if they had had the chance to identify my disease earlier, it would have been much better because I wouldn’t have lost the movement that I’d lost,” Mrs Jeyachandran said.

“I could have changed my movement by doing exercise earlier. I think that the main thing is to prevent Parkinson’s progressing.”

Joanne Colquhoun, 78, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013 while battling breast cancer and undergoing chemotherapy, said an early diagnosis could have helped slow the rate of her Parkinson’s. While her medications helped, she decided to undergo deep brain stimulation surgery that she said improved her quality of life.

“A neurologist said to me when I was first diagnosed to get everything done that you need to get done or want to get done in ways of travel … in the next five years, because after that things may ­become difficult for me,” Mrs Colquhoun said.

“It’s been 10 years and things are becoming more difficult now to do on my own, so, I think an early diagnosis may have an effect in that way.”

Macquarie University neurology professor Dominic Rowe, who led the Australian effort in the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative), said the research was a “gargantuan effort”.

The Parkinson’s disease specialist explained that people with REM sleep behaviour disorder and those experiencing a loss of smell could especially benefit from an early ­diagnosis and treatment.

“Parkinson’s disease starts around about 10 years before your physical features begin,” Professor Rowe said. “So the concept is that maybe if people are presenting with REM sleep behaviour disorder, we actually look at them very carefully to see whether they have features of Parkinson’s disease, and then providing that we have therapies that slow the disease.”

Professor Rowe said the next step was to develop a treatment that would slow the rate of the disorder, with work already under way.

Not-for-profit Shake It Up provided the $1.3m grant to mobilise the Macquarie University research. Its founder Clyde Campbell said the test would allow neurologists to track Parkinson’s progression.

“This is huge for us because the last major breakthrough was in treating the symptoms of disease when we developed levodopa, that was back in the ’60s,” Mr Campbell said.