Institute of Neuroimmunology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, 814 38 Bratislava, Slovakia.
Department of Pathophysiology, Jessenius Faculty of Medicine in Martin, Comenius University, 814 99 Bratislava, Slovakia.
Int J Mol Sci. 2020 Nov 17;21(22):8666. doi: 10.3390/ijms21228666.
The primary pathogenesis associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) occurs in peripheral tissues several years before the onset of typical motor symptoms. Early and reliable diagnosis of PD could provide new treatment options for PD patients and improve their quality of life. At present, however, diagnosis relies mainly on clinical symptoms, and definitive diagnosis is still based on postmortem pathological confirmation of dopaminergic neuronal degeneration. In addition, the similarity of the clinical, cognitive, and neuropathological features of PD with other neurodegenerative diseases calls for new biomarkers, suitable for differential diagnosis. Alpha-synuclein (α-Syn) is a potential PD biomarker, due to its close connection with the pathogenesis of the disease. Here we summarize the currently available information on the possible use of α-Syn as a biomarker of early stages of PD in gastrointestinal (GI) tissues, highlight its potential to distinguish PD and other neurodegenerative diseases, and suggest alternative methods (primarily developed for other tissue analysis) that could improve α-Syn detection procedures or diagnostic methods in general.
帕金森病（PD）的主要发病机制发生在典型运动症状出现前数年的外周组织中。PD 的早期和可靠诊断可为 PD 患者提供新的治疗选择，并提高他们的生活质量。然而，目前的诊断主要依赖于临床症状，而明确的诊断仍然依赖于死后多巴胺能神经元变性的病理证实。此外，PD 的临床、认知和神经病理学特征与其他神经退行性疾病的相似性需要新的生物标志物，以便进行鉴别诊断。α-突触核蛋白（α-Syn）是 PD 的一个潜在生物标志物，因为它与疾病的发病机制密切相关。在这里，我们总结了目前关于 α-Syn 作为胃肠道（GI）组织中 PD 早期阶段生物标志物的可能用途的信息，强调了其区分 PD 和其他神经退行性疾病的潜力，并提出了替代方法（主要是为其他组织分析开发的），这些方法可以改进 α-Syn 的检测程序或一般诊断方法。
