Scientists at ETH Zurich in Switzerland have discovered that the shape of a group of proteins is different in the spinal fluid of healthy people and those with Parkinson's disease.

These proteins hold promise as novel biomarkers for the detection of Parkinson's disease. The relevant research was published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.

Unlike many human diseases that can be detected and diagnosed using biomarkers in blood or other bodily fluids, Parkinson's disease has not been clinically identified to indicate biomarkers for this neurodegenerative disease.

New research by Molecular Systems Biology professor Paula Picotti's team could change that by identifying 76 proteins that may serve as biomarkers for Parkinson's disease.

In the latest study, Picotti's team examined the cerebrospinal fluid of 50 healthy people and 50 people with Parkinson's disease. To look for biomarkers, the research team used a special method called LiP-MS to measure the proteome, which can measure structural changes in proteins and reveal the exact location of the changes.

Traditional proteome measurement methods often only record different types of proteins and their quantities, but do not record structural changes.

What's special about the latest study is that while the potential biomarker proteins were found in both healthy individuals and patients, the molecules don't have the same shape or structure, Picotti said.

So it's not the presence of certain proteins, but the shape they take that reveals Parkinson's disease. For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that analyzing the structure of all proteins in bodily fluids can identify potential biomarkers for disease.

The team plans to thoroughly test the markers that have been discovered and validated in the next step among a larger patient population. To evaluate their efficiency in detecting Parkinson's disease, determine the subtype of Parkinson's disease, and make a more accurate prediction on the degree of disease progression.

Or to see if it could be used to detect other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, they also intend to improve the LiP-MS method to amplify biomarker signals, thereby improving the sensitivity of detecting diseases.

The etiology of Parkinson's syndrome has not yet been fully elucidated, and previous studies have shown that it may be related to many factors. Different types have different etiologies, which may be related to factors such as aging, genetic factors, environmental toxins, infection, oxidative stress, and free radical formation.

1. Aging: Aging is one of the most common causes. The vast majority of patients with Parkinson's are mostly elderly people over the age of 60, and some investigations have also found that the incidence of Parkinson's gradually increases with age. It can be seen that the occurrence of Parkinson's has a great relationship with aging.

2. Environmental factors: There are regional differences in the prevalence of Parkinson's disease, so it is suspected that there may be some toxic substances in the environment, such as manganese poisoning and carbon monoxide poisoning, which can produce Parkinson's syndrome symptoms.

3. Genetic factors: Parkinson's has a certain tendency of family aggregation, that is, the prevalence of Parkinson's in the same family is high.

4. Genetic susceptibility: Some patients suffer from Parkinson's because their immediate relatives in the family have the disease, and these people were all susceptible to Parkinson's before the disease.

However, under the interaction with environmental factors and aging, a large number of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra degenerate through mechanisms such as oxidative stress, mitochondrial failure, calcium overload, excitatory amino acid toxicity, apoptosis, and immune abnormalities, which lead to disease.

5. Cerebral arteriosclerosis: This syndrome can occur when cerebral arteriosclerosis causes multiple lacunar infarctions in the brainstem and basal ganglia, affecting the dopamine-striatal pathway in the substantia nigra.

However, such patients are often accompanied by pseudobulbar palsy, tendon hyperreflexia, positive pathological symptoms, and often accompanied by obvious dementia.