Our Eyes May Provide Early Warning Signs of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's

Researchers suggest retina changes may predict development of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and images of the eye could determine one's susceptibility, reports the Washington Post . Cedars-Sinai Professor Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui and colleagues have pioneered a method to visualize plaques associated with Alzheimer's in the retinal neurons of live patients with mild cognitive impairment, at a relatively cheap cost of about $285 a scan. Patients first ingest curcumin, a compound that gives turmeric its color, and which has a strong affinity for amyloid beta, the protein that constitutes plaques. Turmeric glows yellow in the presence of blue light. Meanwhile, a team at the University of Florida uses a fundus camera to capture high-resolution photos of the microscopic blood vessels in the back of the eye. Changes to the vessels in the brain are characteristic of both Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and evidence strongly suggests that blood vessels in the retina mirror those changes. Early results imply that computer algorithms can use these images to differentiate Parkinson's patients from healthy controls with more than 70 percent accuracy.