Thickness of GCIPL, INL of Retina Reduced in Parkinson Disease

Findings seen among patients with prevalent PD in the AlzEye cohort and for incident PD in the U.K. Biobank cohort

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, Aug. 24, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Reduced thickness of the ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) and inner nuclear layer (INL) of the retina are seen in individuals with Parkinson disease (PD), according to a study published online Aug. 21 in Neurology.

Siegfried Karl Wagner, M.D., from the University College London, and colleagues used data from a retrospective cohort of 154,830 patients aged 40 years and older from the AlzEye cohort to detect retinal markers, measured using optical coherence tomography, in prevalent PD from 2008 to 2018. In addition, retinal markers were examined in incident PD using data from 67,311 volunteers aged 40 to 69 years from the U.K. Biobank who underwent retinal imaging during 2006 to 2010.

The researchers identified 700 patients with prevalent PD and 105,770 controls within the AlzEye cohort. Thinner GCIPL and INL were seen for individuals with prevalent PD (–2.12 and –0.99 µm, respectively). Fifty-three participants from the U.K. Biobank developed PD at a mean of 2,653 ± 851 days. Associations were seen for thinner GCIPL and thinner INL with incident PD (hazard ratios, 0.62 per standard deviation increase and 0.70, respectively).

“I continue to be amazed by what we can discover through eye scans. While we are not yet ready to predict whether an individual will develop Parkinson’s, we hope that this method could soon become a pre-screening tool for people at risk of disease,” Wagner said in a statement.

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