Doctors from the University of Kiel (Germany) have developed a method that, by detecting changes in the protein in the blood, can detect Parkinson’s disease. Previous diagnostic methods were based mainly on already formed external symptoms. The results of the study are published in the journal Brain.

The proposed method helped to recognize the disease in 30 patients and did not find any signs of the disease in 50 people from the control group. The analysis is based on three steps: isolation of nerve cell vesicles in the samples; detection of a protein that causes Parkinson’s disease using specific antibodies; detection of a pathologically altered form of α-synuclein.

However, scientists emphasized that this method requires further improvements so that it can be applied everywhere. The authors also want to know if this method is possible to diagnose at an early stage and whether it will work in the detection of other neurodegenerative diseases.

Previously, a research team at Rush Medical College noticed that boxing can reduce some of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.