According to a recently published study, scientists have found that skin testing may hold promise for early identification and diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. The study will also be presented at the upcoming 67th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, April 18-25, 2015. This study shows that skin biopsies can be used to detect elevated levels of abnormal proteins in both diseases. According to study author Dr. Ildefonso Rodriguez-Leyva, of the Hospital Universitario Centro de San Luis (Potosí, Mexico), “Until now, it has not been possible to obtain pathological confirmation without a brain biopsy, and therefore these diseases are usually confirmed only after further progression of the disease. We hypothesized that given that skin and brain tissue have the same origin at the time of billeting, they may also show the same abnormal proteins. This new test provides potential biomarkers that may allow physicians to recognize and diagnose these diseases earlier.” In this study, the researchers removed skin biopsy tissue from 20 patients with Alzheimer’s disease and 16 patients with Parkinson’s disease, as well as 17 patients with dementia due to other diseases, and compared them to 12 healthy patients in the same age group. They tested these skin samples for the presence of specific types of mutant proteins – indicating whether the patients had Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease had higher levels of tau proteins compared to healthy patients and patients with dementia due to other diseases – seven times higher than the former. In addition, alpha-synuclein levels were eight times higher in Parkinson’s disease patients than in healthy controls. Alzheimer’s disease is ranked as the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S., and about 5.4 million Americans are currently diagnosed with dementia. Parkinson’s disease affects about 1 million Americans, with at least 60,000 new cases reported each year. Dr. Rodriguez-Leyva noted, “More research is needed to determine these results, but the findings are exciting because we may begin to use skin biopsies to study and learn more about these diseases. It also means that scientists will have easier access to tissue to use in their research. This process could be used to study not only Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, but also other neurodegenerative diseases.”