Approximately every tenth patient who receives the diagnosis Parkinson's disease can in fact have another neurological disease that resembles Alzheimer's disease more, shows a new study from Umeå and Gothenburg University.
When researchers took samples of the spinal cord fluid from Parkinson's patients, it was found that some of them lacked the protein that is usually a marker for Parkinson's disease. Instead, two typical markers for Alzheimer's disease, tau and amyloid, were found in the Parkinson's patients. The patients also had a worse cognitive ability and balance than normal in Parkinson's disease.
The researchers mean that it may be a intermediate form of both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.
”It is an important result that can change our understanding of the disease process and in the long run affect the treatment”, says David Bäckström, neurologist at Umeå University and one of the study's main authors, in a press release.
The study is published in the scientific journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
