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Neurodegenerative disease

Sleep disorder provides a clue to early disease detection

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 6, page 585 (2010)Cite this article

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“In 2006, we described that after a mean follow-up of 5 years, ≈50% of patients with IRBD developed a neurodegenerative disease,” says lead investigator Alex Iranzo. Patients with IRBD were, therefore, identified as having an increased risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders, but the researchers had no way of identifying which patients would develop these diseases.

Many neurodegenerative disorders have latent periods, during which neuropathological characteristics of the disease develop in the absence of clinical symptoms, and neuroprotective therapies could potentially be most effective at these time points. However, identifying patients at early stages of disease development is difficult.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Iranzo, A. et al. Decreased striatal dopamine transporters uptake and substantia nigra hyperechogenicity as risk markers of synucleinopathy in patients with idiopathic rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder: a prospective study. Lancet Neurol. doi:10.1016/S1474-4422(10)70216-7

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  1. Eleanor Beal
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Beal, E. Sleep disorder provides a clue to early disease detection. Nat Rev Neurol 6, 585 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2010.152

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