Blood Biomarker in Early Parkinson's Disease

Currently, there are no cures or disease modifying therapies for Parkinson's disease (PD). This is partially due to the inability to detect the disease before it has progressed to a stage where there are clinical manifestations. The identification and validation of high throughput biomarkers to measure disease progression (as well as identify pre-clinical disease onset) is critical to the development of disease-modifying or even preventative therapies. In this study, we are testing a blood biomarker for PD. Several detection parameters will be assessed through enrollment of Parkinson's patients and age matched healthy volunteers over 50 years of age to learn more about the analytical process and biological variability.