More than 10 million people around the world have Parkinson’s disease — a neurological diseaseTrusted Source that affects a person’s ability to move. Researchers are still unclear as to why a person may get Parkinson’s disease, but there are some indications that disturbances of the gut microbiome might play a role. And because early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease develop gradually, they can sometimes be hard to spot. One area of the body that can show signs of Parkinson’s disease is the eyes. People with Parkinson’s disease may experience changes to their vision, dry eye, and/or difficulty reading or keeping their eyes fully open.
Now, researchers from Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology have found specific eye markers indicating Parkinson’s disease. Scientists say these markers can be found on average seven years before a person receives an official diagnosis. This study was recently published in the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. For this study, Dr. Siegfried Wagner, Honorary Clinical Senior Research Fellow at the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and lead author of this study, and his team used artificial intelligence to analyze data from two different datasets — the AlzEye dataset and the U.K. Biobank database.
Scientists used data from retinal eye scans taken by optical coherence tomography (OCT).“OCT is a non-invasive imaging modality which can generate cross-sectional images of the retinaTrusted Source,” Dr. Wagner explained. “In many ways, OCT is analogous to ultrasound, except rather than sound waves, it uses the backscattering of light to generate images imparting much greater resolution.” Through an OCT scan, a doctor can see the layers of the retina and measure their thickness. This can help in the diagnosis of certain diseases, including age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and holes in the maculaTrusted Source. Upon analyzing data from the eye scans, the researchers found differences in two specific layers of the inner retina in people with Parkinson’s disease — the ganglion cell-inner plexiformTrusted Source layer and the inner nuclearTrusted Source layer.
