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Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

moorfields.nhs.uk

101–110 of 137 posts

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#101
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if you’re a false positive? What opportunities dis you forgo by choosing a path based on incorrect foreknowledge?

As someone who is somewhat older and had a medical scare, I am going to say I wish I had done everything always as if I am going to die in a year.

> I wish I had done everything always as if I am going to die in a year.

But euthanasia as a non traumatic form of death unlike suicide, is still prohibitively expensive.

Crowdfunding steals your privacy.

Science steals your privacy, and can keep you alive for longer.

So are you not over rating life somewhat?

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#102
post #29

I recall two companies working on this - RightEye and Neuralight: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/17/righteyes-portable-eye-tra... https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/neuralight-aims-to-track-a... Probably there are more by now. As I recall this data is great for essentially saying "you should go get a real test." No one is diagnosing - just saying that a certain, say, eye movement slowness is correlated and you can det…

is early diagnosis useful?

To medicine, generally? Yes, because we could enroll patients in trials to look at prevention/delay of symptom onset. To patients right now? No, and probably a net negative, because the psychological harms from knowing what's coming would cause greater harm than the benefit of planning.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#103
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nothing else, it could allow you to make different decisions in your life. If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years, I'm sure as shit not saving for long term retirement anymore.

> If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years Parkinsons affects motor control, not mental functioning. The point still stands -- if I got a diagnosis I would be less likely to embark on learning to play the piano, and I'd start educating myself on the disease. EDIT: I'll correct myself. It primarily affects motor control, but late in the disease it can affect cognition.

I think "primarily" is overstating it. You don't just keep on truckin' with diminished motor control. It is degenerative and causes dementia

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#104
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We think you may get cancer or dementia, we deny you insurance converge Pre-existing conditions can't be used to deny health insurance coverage in the United States. This has been true since 2014. Please don't perpetuate the myth that people should avoid screenings for fear of losing health coverage.

Practicality matters. Squeezing you dry isn’t denying coverage by the letter of the word, but the effect is the same. How much opportunity is drained form everyone who relies on insulin to survive every month?

Doubling down on your ignorance. Impressive

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#105
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> say, eye movement slowness It’s not just movement. Retinal tissue develops from the same embryonic tissue as the brain. They probably looked at structure, vasculature. The best anecdote in this space- nobody with congenital blindness has developed schizophrenia.

> nobody with congenital blindness has developed schizophrenia What’s the rationale for why this might happen?

You could posit that a necessary trigger for developing schizophrenia is (over)stimulation of the visual cortex. If that can't happen in blind people (I don't know if all blindness is the same), they'd be naturally protected without even having to consider a genetic component.

But to me, very low incidence rate for both seems like a sufficient rationale. Given that there's both viral and genetic causes for congenital blindness, it just doesn't make sense to imply the protection is genetic: even if true, there would still be cases of schizophrenia among the people that were blinded by a viral infection in-utero.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#106
post #35
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is early diagnosis useful?

If nothing else, it could allow you to make different decisions in your life. If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years, I'm sure as shit not saving for long term retirement anymore.

> If my mind is going to be gone in 10 years, I'm sure as shit not saving for long term retirement anymore.

But hopefully if you could get a Parkinson's diagnosis seven years prior to symptoms, you'd be able to save some money to keep from becoming a burden on your family later on.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#107
post #82

Is there any meaningful benefit to knowing you have Parkinson's a few years earlier when there's no cure to it?

Yes - diet and exercise can play a significant role in slowing progression. If you become aware early you can quickly adjust these things in your life and it could slow progression.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#108

Check out the actual paper: https://n.neurology.org/content/neurology/early/2023/08/21/W... There is significant overlap in the distributions of prodromal and control Parkinson’s patients even for the measure with the strongest signal. While some values for that measure seem to be almost conclusive markets of Parkinson’s, there are ranges in which the overlap is enough to make it not useful as a sole measure without…

>Seems promising at catching a decent proportion of Parkinson’s super early

What does early intervention look like for Parkinson’s (besides lifestyle changes)?

As far as I know the treatment for Parkinson’s is basically lifelong dopamine pills, which of course you build a tolerance to and which lose effectiveness over time, requiring ever higher doses. Meaning once you start on them, the ticking countdown of your brain’s lifespan starts as well.

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#109
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not necessarily true. Major US corporations like DICK's are all aboard the woke train despite hemorrhaging customers massively from the second and third order consequences of banning scary things from their stores several years ago. To the tune of $250 million. And the CEO kept his job!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/205758/net-sales-of-dick... Not seeing much customer hemorrhaging in that graph.

Surprising if true. How do you dig yourself into a $250 million hole with ever increasing net sales?

Re: Eye scans detect signs of Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before diagnosis

#110
It's good that there's progress being made on Parkinson's, even if there's no cure.

My father had it, and he's a definite data point for it being caused by trichloroethylene, as an engineer that worked with metal and degreasers, he was exposed to it for years.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/widely-used-chemical...

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