Watch the August Research Forum Recording

Researcher: Jasmine Galper, PhD

Research Institute: The University of Sydney

Date: Wednesday 3 August

Time: 5pm – 6pm

Many genetic risk factors for Parkinson’s disease have lipid-related functions and lipid-modulating drugs such as statins may be protective against Parkinson’s disease. Despite the potential role for lipids in Parkinson’s disease, most research to date has been protein-centric.

To better determine the extent of lipid dysregulation in Parkinson’s disease, untargeted high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry was performed on 536 serum and 88 cerebrospinal fluid samples obtained from The Michael J. Fox Foundation LRRK2 Clinical Cohort Consortium.

Results from this study demonstrate that dysregulated lipids in Parkinson’s disease generally, and in LRRK2 mutation carriers, are from functionally and metabolically related pathways. These findings provide new insight into the extent of lipid dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease and therapeutics manipulating these pathways may potentially be beneficial for Parkinson’s disease patients. Moreover, serum lipid profiles may be novel biomarkers for both genetic and idiopathic Parkinson’s disease. Future study includes determining whether serum lipid measurements can predict future clinical outcomes of Parkinson’s disease patients.