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From the Journals

New Diagnostic Tool Shows Promise for Early and Accurate Detection of Parkinson’s Disease Using Blood and Saliva

Dual blood and saliva test achieves high accuracy in diagnosing Parkinson’s, showing promise as a non-invasive alternative to cerebrospinal fluid analysis.

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Researchers identified a new approach for diagnosing Parkinson’s disease (PD) that combines blood and saliva tests, potentially offering a sensitive and minimally invasive alternative to current diagnostic methods.

The study, published in Acta Neuropathologica Communications, utilized the α-synuclein seed amplification assay (αSyn-SAA), which detects pathological aggregates of the α-synuclein protein—a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions worldwide.

Early and accurate diagnosis remains a significant challenge because current methods rely heavily on clinical assessments, which have a diagnostic accuracy of approximately 80% at early stages. Definitive diagnosis is still based on post-mortem brain analysis, making the need for accurate and accessible biomarkers even more pressing.

While cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) testing using αSyn-SAA has demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity in detecting PD, the invasiveness of CSF collection limits its use in routine practice. Blood and saliva tests, in contrast, are much less invasive and could be performed more easily and frequently, the researchers noted.

This prospective study involved αSyn-SAA analysis of 124 serum and 131 saliva samples from participants, including those clinically diagnosed with PD and healthy controls. The serum samples achieved a diagnostic sensitivity of 80.49% and specificity of 90.48%, while the saliva samples showed 74.70% sensitivity and 97.92% specificity.

However, the researchers found that when using combined results from both blood and saliva samples, the diagnostic accuracy improved substantially. This combined approach yielded a diagnostic sensitivity of 95.83%, specificity of 96.15%, and overall accuracy of 98%—comparable to the results from CSF tests but without the need for invasive procedures.

The results indicate that combining serum and saliva αSyn-SAA testing could serve as a minimally invasive, highly accurate diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease. While the study serves as a proof of principle, larger-scale studies with diverse patient populations are needed to validate these findings and explore whether this approach could be applied to other related neurodegenerative disorders, the researchers wrote.