Salivary Gland Needle Biopsy Technique Eases Diagnosis of Early Parkinson's Disease

A recent paper assessed the potential value of submandibular salivary gland biopsies for early Parkinson's disease (PD) and suggested that the technique might eventually emerge as a gold standard for biomarker studies short of autopsy confirmation.

While autopsy and advanced PD studies have suggested that the submandibular gland was an important biopsy site, there have been few, if any, studies in early PD. Therefore, investigators at the Mayo Clinic (Phoenix, AZ, USA) performed transcutaneous needle core biopsies of the submandibular gland on 25 early PD (duration less than five years) patients and 10 controls. The biopsies were done as an office procedure, and the tissues were stained for phosphorylated alpha-synuclein. Only nerve element staining was considered positive.


Results revealed that submandibular gland needle biopsies identified phosphorylated alpha-synuclein staining in 74% (14/19) of early PD subjects and two of nine (22%) control subjects. False positives may be true false positives or may represent very early, asymptomatic PD.

“This is the first study demonstrating the value of testing a portion of the submandibular gland to diagnose a living person with early Parkinson's disease. Making a better diagnosis in living patients is a big step forward in our effort to understand and better treat patients," said first author Dr. Charles Adler, professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic. This finding, in patients with early Parkinson’s disease, may be of great use since accuracy of diagnosis in patients with early disease is not nearly as good as in those having the disease for more than 10 years."

The study was published in the January 22, 2016, online edition of the journal Movement Disorders.

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