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Daily Mail, 12/06/2014, p.30, Ben Spencer: Scientists have developed a six-minute test which could give an early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Currently, Parkinson’s patients only discover they have the debilitating neurological problem when the symptoms have already taken hold. But Oxford University academics have come up with a new way of spotting the disease at an early stage. The researchers were able to detect early Parkinson’s disease with a remarkable 85% accuracy. The technique uses an MRI scanner to monitor the neural connections in a concentrated area at the very centre of the brain.

Basal Ganglia Connectivity © (c) Clare Mackay
Basal Ganglia Connectivity

Study leader Dr Clare Mackay, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, and co-author and neurologist Dr Michele Hu are quoted

Also:

Scan spots Parkinson’s before symptoms show

Daily Telegraph, 12/06/2014, p.2

MRI Scans Can Detect Early Onset of Parkinson’s, Study Finds

Time, 11/06/2014, Dan Kedmey

Research gives new hope to Parkinson’s sufferers

Oxford Mail, 12/06/2014, p.7, Oliver Evans

Brain scans detect early signs of Parkinson’s

China Daily, 16/06/2014

Oxford University researchers have developed a simple and quick brain-scanning technique that offers promise for early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, providing hope of tackling the disease before it starts to cause symptoms. The research team demonstrated that their new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) approach can detect people who have early-stage Parkinson's disease with nearly 90 percent accuracy, according to their paper published in US scientific journal Neurology. The team compared 19 people with early-stage Parkinson's disease and 19 healthy people, matched for age and gender. They found that Parkinson's patients had much lower connectivity in the basal ganglia. ‘At the moment we have no way to predict who is at risk of Parkinson's disease in the vast majority of cases,’ Clare Mackay, one of the joint lead researchers at Oxford University, said. ‘We are excited that this MRI technique might prove to be a good marker for the earliest signs of Parkinson's. The results are very promising.’

Read Oxford University Press Release

Read the Neurology Editorial

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