Lidea Feed

New skin-based probe to promote the diagnosis of weakening neurodigenerative disease

Sandy Verma April 30, 2025 09:24 PM

New delhi�: � � � � New Delhi: Canadian researchers have developed a skin -based investigation that can detect specific characteristics of the progressive scrubly palsy (PSP) – a rare neurodynative disease that affects body activities including walking, balance and swallowing.

The team of the University Health Network (UHN) and the University of Toronto said the investigation may allow more accurate and faster PSP diagnosis than the current methods.

� “This probe is important to allocate patients for correct clinical trials, but it will be even more important in the future as researchers develop an accurate treatment for PSP,” said Ivan Martinez-Wallbua, scientific colleague of Rossi Progressive Supranuclear Palsi Center in UHN.

He said, “We need to develop diagnosis equipment along with new remedies so that we can identify patients who will benefit the most as these treatments are available.”

Although researchers have successfully detected the wrongly folded protein in neurodogenative diseases, this technique has not always been accessible and some patients are unable to undergo this process.

As a result, patients are usually diagnosed on the basis of their symptoms and clinical presentation, so some patients may be misinformed – especially for rare neurodigenative diseases such as PSP. It can also have a negative effect on research as patients with PSP can be misinformed with Parkinson's disease and can be included in a test that targets wrong proteins, affecting the results.

The new test described in the recent issue of �Jama Neurology, may detect the sequence of specific incorrectly folded to PSP.

Gabber Kovax, Professor at Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at Toronto University's Temmeter Faculty of Medicine, said the results showed that “the disease- tau protein in the skin of living patients could be detected with high accuracy.”

In addition, PSP patients as well as multiple system atrophy, corticobal degeneration, Parkinson's disease and healthy control people found the skin biopsy of people with healthy controls, the team found an exhibited tau in most of the PSP patients, but very rarely in other neurodenger diseases.

The important thing is that MisFolded Tou Protein was not detected in patients with Parkinson's disease or healthy control. Overall, the researchers found that the assay had 90 percent sensitivity and 90 percent specificity.

Martinez-butterna said that this test can be included in a panel of blood and skin-based tests with clinical information, which will help physicians to make more accurate diagnosis and recommend more appropriate clinical trials.