This is attested by the latest study carried out by the Central Hospital of San Luis Potosí (Mexico) which, in the absence of corroborating the results, proposes that a simple biopsy of the patient's skin would serve to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases early, easily and effectively. well known as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
The biopsy can show if there are abnormally high levels of proteins characteristic of these diseases, as Ildefonso Rodríguez Leyva, leader of the research, comments: “ Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by presenting alterations in the structure and function of various proteins . Having a common origin, skin cells and neurons must express common proteins ”.
This was the starting point for testing the hypothesis that deposits of tau proteins in neurons could also be found in skin. For this, they had the participation of 20 people with Alzheimer's disease, 16 with Parkinson's and 17 with dementia caused by another disease and a control group of 12 healthy people.
Analysis of the skin samples from all of them revealed that both the patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's and those with Parkinson's had seven times higher levels of tau protein than the other volunteers in the experiment.
"If other researchers reproduce our findings, this advance could help an earlier and more timely diagnosis of these pathologies", clarifies Rodríguez.
