Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/792366
t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 7 30 MenningerClinic.com | Named a National Best Hospital in Psychiatry 27 Consecutive Years When someone in your family needs help to regain mental health, our specialists are ready to assist with: One-stop comprehensive psychiatric assessments for ages 6 and older with physician-led specialists Individual, family and couples therapy Medication management Addiction counseling Find the best outpatient mental health partners at Menninger Consultations for ADHD, suitable education or vocational setting, autism spectrum disorder and more Scheduling appointments within 2 weeks. Call today. 713-275-5779 Affiliated with Baylor College of Medicine Menninger OPS ad for TMC Pulse updated 9-13-16.indd 1 9/14/2016 1:14:16 PM "At the clinical phase of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, there is substantial damage in the brain that is often irreversible," Soto said. "The brain can cope with a large amount of dam- age, and only when brain degeneration becomes major is when people start getting symptoms." Soto wants to identify the brain damage responsible for Parkinson's disease earlier. There are some experi- mental treatments for Parkinson's out there, he said, but many scientists and clinicians say they have failed in clini- cal trials because the treatment started too late. "Early diagnosis means good treat- ment," Soto said. His research, funded in part by grants from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, was published in the Dec. 2016 issue of JAMA Neurology, a journal of the American Medical Association. The Credit: Alex Luster with The Storyhive first author of the paper is Mohammad Shahnawaz, Ph.D., of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. Using technology developed by Soto that has been shown to find abnormal proteins (known as misfolded proteins) associated with diseases such as Creutzfeld-Jacob and Alzheimer's, researchers detected very small amounts of the misfolded proteins circulating in cerebrospinal fluid. The hope is that someday, a simple test will be able to detect these mis- folded proteins in blood or urine. "We envision in the future a noninvasive test that someone would take during their 40s or 50s that would be as common as a test to check for cholesterol level," Soto said. "The doctor would test for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, tell you if you have the abnormal protein and recommend what to do about it." We envision in the future a noninvasive test that someone would take during their 40s or 50s that would be as common as a test to check for cholesterol level. — CLAUDIO SOTO, PH.D. Assistant professor of neurology and director of The George and Cynthia Mitchell Center for Research in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Brain Disorders at UTHealth