Recent Advances in Biomarkers for Parkinson’s Disease

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the common progressive neurodegenerative disorders with several motor and non-motor symptoms. Most of the motor symptoms may appear at a late stage where most of the dopaminergic neurons have been already damaged. In order to provide better clinical intervention and treatment at the onset of disease, it is imperative to find accurate biomarkers for early diagnosis, including prodromal diagnosis and preclinical diagnosis. At the same time, these reliable biomarkers can also be utilized to monitor the progress of the disease. In this review article, we will discuss recent advances in the development of PD biomarkers from different aspects, including clinical, biochemical, neuroimaging and genetic aspects. Although various biomarkers for PD have been developed so far, their specificity and sensitivity are not ideal when applied individually. So, the combination of multimodal biomarkers will greatly improve the diagnostic accuracy and facilitate the implementation of personalized medicine.

A different vision of translational research in biomarker discovery: a pilot study on circulatory mitochondrial proteins as Parkinson’s disease potential biomarkers

“…In fact, despite several years of research focused on the identification of potential molecular biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases, there is no biochemical diagnostic model that helps in the diagnosis of those diseases, including PD [51]. Moreover, critical reviews regarding the potential candidates highlighted so far, have reduced the list of best candidates to a few molecules that have already a known link to the PD pathogenesis and other neurodegenerative diseases, such as the protein DJ-1, oligomerized αsynuclein, tau, phospho-tau, amyloid β1-42 [for concise reviews on this topic consult [5,6,51]]. This evidence further confirms the importance of including the biological relevance as a selection criterion in the biomarker discovery pipelines, as it was introduced in this work.…”

“…4 Centro Hospitalar Cova da Beira, E.P.E, Covilhã, Portugal. 5 Neurology Department, Centro Hospitalar e Universitário de Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal. 6 Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research (CIBIT), Coimbra, Portugal.…”

“…All these aspects combined result in a very challenging analysis, which may justify, in part, the low reproducibility and success of biomarker discovery studies. In line with this general tendency, the studies devoted to the identification of circulating biomarkers for Parkinson's Disease (PD) have also failed several times in the past [5,6].…”

Clinical features and genetic characteristics of two Chinese pedigrees with fatal family insomnia

“…Therefore, it is necessary to find a robust biomarker test for early diagnosis. It has been reported that combination of biochemical biomarkers, neuroimaging and genetic screening are necessary for the early and accurate diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease [28][29][30]. Although genetic testing was strongly recommended.…”

The Challenge and Opportunity to Diagnose Parkinson's Disease in Midlife

“…Research has explored a number of potential molecular markers for PD that center on measures that directly or indirectly assess the degree of mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, Lewy bodies formation, neuroinflammation, and other core pathological characteristics of PD in readily accessible biofluids or biopsies (62). Their utility in diagnosing or prognosing the disease early on, however, has remained limited (63,64).…”