On 5 August, an international team of researchers published an open access article in Nature Communications describing a two-step approach to predict Lewy body pathology, which is present in conditions such as dementia with Lewy bodies, Parkinson’s disease and in some cases of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers assessed a workflow that begins with smell-function testing to identify people with reduced smell, followed by confirmatory cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) α-synuclein seed amplification testing only for those individuals.
In a study of 358 autopsied participants, this approach predicted postmortem Lewy body pathology with 94% accuracy overall and similar accuracy within clinical subgroups. The method reduced the need for CSF testing by 43% overall. In an independent in vivo cohort of 1,209 participants, the workflow predicted CSF α-synuclein test status with 79% accuracy and reduced CSF testing by 26%. The authors note that this strategy could lower healthcare costs, reduce the burden of invasive lumbar punctures and support more efficient case finding for research and clinical purposes. The article has been published open access and can be read here: