- Cancer risk stratification company PreciseDx, a Mount Sinai Health System spin-off, has developed artificial intelligence-enabled digital pathology technology to detect Parkinson’s disease (PD), and new research conducted in collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) shows it accurately detects the disease before the onset of severe symptoms.
PD is a neurological disorder that can be difficult to diagnose early because the symptoms are subtle and occur gradually, according to the National Institute on Aging. Other conditions also share multiple symptoms with PD, resulting in misdiagnosis or a late diagnosis when symptoms have already become severe. Since the disease is most common in older adults, early symptoms are also occasionally dismissed as the normal effects of aging.
Diagnosis of PD typically relies on a neurologist reviewing a patient’s signs and symptoms, medical history, and a neurological and physical examination. Additional tests and medical imaging can be done to rule out other conditions that share symptoms with PD. Skin biopsies and spinal taps can provide information about a patient’s alpha-synuclein proteins, a type of protein linked to idiopathic PD. A doctor may also prescribe a PD medication to evaluate whether the patient responds to the treatment—significant improvement with this type of medication can be used to confirm a PD diagnosis. Research to pinpoint biomarkers for various neurological diseases, including PD, is ongoing.
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