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Decreased plasma α-synuclein in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease patients after adjusting hemolysis factor

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Abstract

Background

Lewy bodies are pathological hallmarks for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, where the core components are composed of aggregated forms of α-synuclein (α-syn). Although α-syn has been investigated as a potential biomarker for PD, its usage has been limited and still remains controversial.

Objective

An accurate enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed for the detection of α-syn in plasma. The hemolysis score was calculated to eliminate the additive α-syn levels from RBCs. Human plasma samples were collected in heparinized blood tubes from idiopathic Parkinson disease (IPD) and healthy control (HC).

Result

Hemolysis score had a strong correlation with the level of plasma α-syn. From the limited set of samples in this preliminary study, decreased α-syn concentrations were observed in patients with IPD in comparison to HC after adjusting for hemolysis factor. Similar results with a commercial ELISA kit were found for measuring α-syn from the same set of samples with lower correlation and the reduced accuracy of diagnosis than the current study.

Conclusion

The adjustments for the hemolysis factor would be indispensable, supporting plasma α-syn as a potential surrogate biomarker for distinguishing IPD from HC.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grants awarded by the Korean Government (NRF-2020R1A2B5B01002463) and Gachon University Research Fund (2018-0682). The authors would like to express their gratitude to the participants for providing the samples and their agreement to this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Veterans Medical Research Institute, Veterans Health Service Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Kyu Hwan Shim

  2. Department of Bionano Technology, Gachon University, Songnam, Gyeonggi, Korea

    Seung Chan Kim & Seong Soo A. An

  3. Department of Neurology, Chung-Ang University Hospital, Seoul, Korea

    Young Chul Youn

  4. Departments of Neurology, Gachon University Gil Medical Center, Incheon, Korea

    Young-Hee Sung

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  1. Kyu Hwan Shim
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  2. Seung Chan Kim
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  5. Seong Soo A. An
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Contributions

Conceptualization, SSAA; investigation, KHS, SCK and Y-HS; methodology, SSAA; project administration, Y-HS and SSAA; resources, YCY and Y-HS; supervision, SSAA; validation, Y-HS and SSAA; writing—original draft, KHS; writing—review and editing, SCK, Y-HS and SSAA.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Young-Hee Sung or Seong Soo A. An.

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Conflict of interest

KyuHwan Shim, Seung Chan Kim, Young Chul Youn, Young-Hee Sung and Seong Soo A. An declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and animal rights

All patients provided written informed consent and the study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Gachon University Gil Medical Center.

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Shim, K.H., Kim, S.C., Youn, Y.C. et al. Decreased plasma α-synuclein in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease patients after adjusting hemolysis factor. Mol. Cell. Toxicol. 16, 477–484 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13273-020-00104-7

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