The Concept of Prodromal Parkinson's Disease.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is currently clinically defined by a set of cardinal motor features centred on the presence of bradykinesia and at least one additional motor symptom out of tremor, rigidity or postural instability. However, converging evidence from clinical, neuropathological, and imaging research suggests initiation of PD-specific pathology prior to appearance of these classical motor signs. This latent phase of neurodegeneration in PD is of particular relevance in relation to the development of disease-modifying or neuroprotective therapies which would require intervention at the earliest stages of disease. A key challenge in PD research, therefore, is to identify and validate markers for the preclinical and prodromal stages of the illness. Currently, several nonmotor symptoms have been associated with an increased risk to develop PD in otherwise healthy individuals and ongoing research is aimed at validating a variety of candidate PD biomarkers based on imaging, genetic, proteomic, or metabolomic signatures, supplemented by work on tissue markers accessible to minimally invasive biopsies. In fact, the recently defined MDS research criteria for prodromal PD have included combinations of risk and prodromal markers allowing to define target populations of future disease modification trials.
Department of Neurology, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria.|Sobell Department of Motor Neuroscience, UCL Institute of Neurology, London, UK.
Philipp
P
Mahlknecht
Department of Neurology, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria.
Klaus
K
Seppi
Department of Neurology, Medical University Innsbruck, Austria.
Werner
W
Poewe
D015415:Biomarkers; D006801:Humans; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D062706:Prodromal Symptoms
D015415:Biomarkers
Parkinson’s disease (PD); biomarker; early diagnosis; genetic and molecular biomarkers; neuroimaging; nonmotor symptoms (NMS); premotor PD