New research brings new hope during Parkinson’s Disease Awareness Month

In what researchers are calling “an enormous leap forward in the understanding of Parkinson’s disease,” a new tool has been discovered that can detect pathology in spinal fluid of people who have not yet been diagnosed or exhibited clinical symptoms of the disease but are at a high risk of developing it.  The new research, published last week in the journal Lancet Neurology, describes the use of α-synuclein seeding amplification assay (αSyn-SAA), a technique to amplify then analyze clusters of the tiny protein that builds up in the brains of those with the disease. This new tool could open the door to early detection of abnormal alpha-synuclein – known as the “Parkinson’s protein.”