Introduction

The diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is very difficult, it has a high cost and it takes from 6 months up to 1 year to be formulated. There is nothing that can clearly identify this disease, discriminate it from the other diseases or identify the early phases. This invention foresees a rapid and economic kit based on the plasmatic variation of specific peptides to early underline Parkinson’s disease.

Technical features

Nowadays, an analysis for the early diagnosis of the Parkinson’s disease is not available. The current diagnosis requires neurological examinations combined with expensive imaging analyses (PET, MIBG).  Our invention foresees a simple and economic kit for the early diagnosis of the Parkinson’s disease through a blood sample. The invention relies on the identification of the plasmatic variation of specific proteins of the chromogranin family. The plasma needs to react in an antigen-pre-treated plate with a primary antibody that specifically marks the proteins to be measured, in order to give the correspondent conjugated primary protein-antibody. Then the conjugated reacts with a secondary biotinylated antibody and with streptavidin peroxidase. Finally, the determination of the optic density of the samples (and therefore the levels of the proteins) is obtained through the spectrophotometer. Time needed for the diagnosis: 7h.

 

Possible Applications

• Diagnostic public and private laboratories.

Advantages

• Early diagnosis;
• Fast procedure (7 hours);
• Low risk for patients;
• Low cost.