A study team from UCL and Moorfields Eye Hospital has discovered markers that show the Signs of Parkinson’s Disease in patients on average seven years before clinical presentation.
Eye Scans Can Detect Signs of Parkinson’s Disease (Photo: Medical News Today)
Signs of Parkinson’s Disease
According to CBS News, the only natural window into a person’s central nervous system is through their eyes. Up to seven years before symptoms appear, researchers have discovered very early Signs of Parkinson’s Disease by examining them.
Researchers at the University College London have identified signs of Parkinson’s disease in these photographs using artificial intelligence, which may exist an average of seven years before patients even have symptoms. This approach might one day be used as a pre-screening tool for people at risk, even if they cannot predict who will get Parkinson’s at this time.
The results are based on three-dimensional eye scans, which optometrists frequently employ to assess a patient’s retina, the layer of nerve cells in the back of the eye, for health issues.
However, it wasn’t known until recently that the same scans also include minute details about the body and brain’s health.
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Help of Artificial Intelligence Program to Identify Signs of Parkinson’s Disease
As per the report of Science Alert, using the help of an artificial intelligence program, researchers compared the eye scans of 154,830 patients aged 40 years and over.
The 700 individuals in this group with prevalent Signs of Parkinson’s Disease showed a small but significant difference in the look of their retinas. In certain regions, they noticed a thinning in the layer of inner ganglion cells, a type of neuron that transmits visual information via dopamine.
Following that, they applied this knowledge to the analysis of eye scans from 67,311 individuals in the UK Biobank database, 53 of whom had Signs of Parkinson’s Disease at the time of the study.
They discovered that this inner ganglion layer thinned before the development of clinical Signs of Parkinson’s Disease.
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