What Can Skin Reveal About Dementia?

Detecting phosphorylated alpha-synuclein could add biological context when symptoms and pathologies overlap

1

Overlapping symptoms and mixed pathologies can make clinical presentation alone insufficient to distinguish Alzheimer’s disease from dementia with Lewy bodies and other dementias.
2

Skin biopsy testing detects cutaneous phosphorylated alpha-synuclein, a protein associated with synucleinopathies, including Lewy body disease.
3

In the Syn-D study, cutaneous phosphorylated alpha-synuclein was detected in participants with mild cognitive impairment associated with suspected dementia with Lewy bodies.
4

A 6-month study of patients with dementia with Lewy bodies estimated an approximately 52% annualized increase in cutaneous phosphorylated alpha-synuclein from baseline.
5

Some Syn-D participants had both cutaneous phosphorylated alpha-synuclein and abnormal phosphorylated tau 217 findings, suggesting coexisting Lewy body and Alzheimer disease pathologies.

1