An ear
An ear. REUTERS

Scientists have discovered a new skin test for detecting brain conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The study found the same abnormal proteins that accumulate in the brain in such disorders on the skin as well.

Researchers have been looking for suitable biomarkers in the body. These are molecules in the blood or exhaled breath, for instance, that can be measured accurately and signal if a disorder is present. Now, Dr Ildefonso Rodriguez-Leyva and colleagues from the University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, believe skin is a good candidate for uncovering hidden brain disorders. They reasoned that skin has the same origin as brain tissue in the developing embryo and might therefore be a window into what’s going on in the mind in later life, at a molecular level. The same protein deposits which occur in the brain also accumulate on the skin, post mortem studies have found.

To test whether the same happens during a person’s life, the researchers recruited 65 volunteers, 12 were healthy controls and the remaining 53 had either Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, or another type of dementia. They took a small skin biopsy from behind the ear of each volunteer to test for signs of the disease. They looked for the presence of two proteins - tau and alpha-synuclein.

The 20 people with Alzheimer’s and 16 with Parkinson’s had raised levels of both these proteins in their skin compared to the healthy controls and the patients with other types of dementia. The people with Parkinson's also had higher levels of alpha-synuclein protein.

The new test offers a potential biomarker that may allow doctors to identify and diagnose these diseases early on. It could also guide research into new treatments, the BBC reported. Early diagnosis is key to preventing the loss of brain tissue in dementia, which can go undetected for 15 to 20 years.

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