Overview

• Researchers at Université de Montréal applied single-cell RNA sequencing to blood samples from 14 Parkinson’s patients, six with Parkinsonian syndromes and ten healthy controls.
• Immune cells in Parkinson’s patients exhibited activation and overexpression of stress-response genes, forming a distinct molecular signature.
• The identified gene signature reliably distinguishes Parkinson’s disease from progressive supranuclear palsy and multiple system atrophy.
• The biomarker profile could address the current lack of clinical diagnostics by enabling early, minimally invasive blood tests.
• The team has published their results in Brain and released an open-access atlas of immune cell subtypes to support further neurodegenerative research.