Structural Retinal changes: a biomarker for dementia?
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Structural Retinal changes: a biomarker for dementia in Parkinson's disease?
IRAS ID
188711
Contact name
David Burn
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Newcastle Upon Tyne NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 10 months, 21 days
Research summary
Dementia is a frequent complication of Parkinson’s. There are over 1200 patients with Parkinson’s in our Parkinson’s Disease Service. Over 20% of our patients already have cognitive impairment or frank dementia, shortening their lives and placing a major burden upon their families as well as social care. Better and earlier management of dementia in Parkinson’s is therefore an urgent and unmet need.
We will explore a simple and non-invasive technique that involves examining the eye, to determine whether changes at the back of the eye can provide a marker of dementia associated with Parkinson’s. Such an approach is completely new and has not been studied elsewhere.It has already been shown that there is retinal amyloid deposition in early Alzheimer's disease and we therefore plan to include a group with the disease as a 'positive control' - to verify our procedure - and for comparison with participants with Parkinson's disease dementia.
The proposal will study four groups of people (participants): (1) people with Parkinson’s; (2) people with mild dementia associated with their Parkinson’s; (3) people with early Alzheimer's and; (4) age-matched healthy subjects without evidence of Parkinson’s or dementia. Participants will be studied at a single visit using equipment already available in the Trust’s Ophthalmology Department. The whole visit will last less than three hours.
We will look at the information we gather to determine whether there are differences in the back of the eye between the different groups. If these changes are found, then we will apply for additional funding to another external agency such as National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) or Parkinson’s UK to further evaluate our findings in a wider range of groups and using additional techniques.REC name
East of Scotland Research Ethics Service REC 1
REC reference
16/ES/0018
Date of REC Opinion
11 Apr 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion