In a study published in the journal Natural aging In a study conducted by researchers at Lund University, the marker DOPA decarboxylase (DCC) was found to be elevated in people with Parkinson’s disease as well as in people with other diseases that cause deficiency Dopamine inside Brain. However, the marker was normal in other brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer. The researchers even found that DCC was elevated in Parkinson’s patients many years before symptoms appeared.
The research team used advanced techniques that made it possible to measure thousands of proteins simultaneously in a small amount of sample. They conducted it on 428 people to identify biomarkers that can indicate whether a patient with motor changes or cognitive difficulties has damage to the dopamine system in the brain. It has been found that when the dopamine system is disrupted in a patient, the levels of the DDC biomarker increase, regardless of where they are in the course of the disease. An important discovery is that this biomarker can be measured in the blood, where it increases significantly, particularly in Parkinson’s disease.
The researchers’ results were checked on another group of 152 people. In addition, by analyzing blood plasma samples from 174 people, they showed that the new biomarker also increases significantly in the blood. Damage to the dopamine system in the brain can also be detected using PET camera examinations. However, this is a very expensive and complicated method that is only available in specialized memory clinics.
