CND Life Sciences Featured in Washington Post Article About Challenges in Diagnosing Parkinson’s
CND Life Sciences and its Syn-One Test® were highlighted in a Washington Post article this week about the difficulties of accurately diagnosing Parkinson’s disease. The article cites a Parkinson’s UK survey in which a quarter of respondents said they received an incorrect diagnosis before ultimately being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Errors in diagnosis are attributed to a lack of lab or imaging tests that can identify Parkinson’s. Instead, healthcare professionals must rely on clinical observations, and Parkinson’s can be difficult to distinguish from other neurodegenerative disorders. The advent of reliable biomarker tests like the Syn-One Test can help improve the diagnostic process.
The Syn-One Test, which detects the presence of misfolded alpha-synuclein in the nerves of the skin, has been used by 2,000 neurologists and other clinicians in 49 states to aid the diagnosis of approximately 25,000 patients (as of September 2024). Its 95% sensitivity rate was demonstrated in a prospective, blinded study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) earlier this year.
Experts caution that because misfolded alpha-synuclein is present in other disorders belonging to the synucleinopathy family, testing for this biomarker can’t help clinicians distinguish between synucleinopathies at this time. “Despite the caveats for clinical use, experts agree that the effect of alpha-synuclein testing on research studies will be monumental,” states the article. As the technology improves, however, alpha-synuclein testing may become the standard for diagnosing Parkinson’s, even before symptoms develop.
