Publication by Drs. Beate Ritz, Yu-Hsuan Chuang and Kimberly Paul outlines potential role of DNA methylation in Parkinson’s disease diagnosis
The scientific publication ‘’Parkinson’s disease is associated with DNA methylation levels in human blood and saliva’’ by Drs. Yu-Hsuan Chuang, Kimberly C. Paul, Jeff M. Bronstein, Yvette Bordelon, Steve Horvath and Beate Ritz published by Genome Medicine on August 30th has gained traction in the scientific community as it points to a possible breakthrough in Parkinson’s disease early diagnosis.
The researchers conducted a population-based case control study of PD, studying blood samples from 335 PD cases and 237 controls, as well as saliva samples from another 128 cases and 131 controls.
This is the largest study into the link between DNA methylation and Parkinson’s to date. Author and Ritz Environmental Epidemiology team member Dr. Yu-Hsuan Chuang recently wrote a guest blog post on BioMed Central in which she further details their research and important findings.
Sources: BioMed Central Medicine Blog, Genome Medicine.