On Apr. 13, 2023, in an enormous leap forward in the understanding of Parkinsonﾒs disease (PD), researchers announced they had discovered a new tool that can reveal a key pathology of the disease: abnormal alpha-synuclein ﾗ known as the ﾓParkinsonﾒs proteinﾔ ﾗ in brain and body cells.

The breakthrough was published in the scientific journal The Lancet Neurology. The tool, called the a-synuclein seeding amplification assay (aSyn-SAA), can detect pathology in spinal fluid not only of people diagnosed with Parkinsonﾒs, but also in individuals who have not yet been diagnosed or shown clinical symptoms of the disease, but are at a high risk of developing it.