Brain and Cerebrospinal Fluid α-Synuclein Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion Identifies Lewy Body Pathology in LRRK2-PD.

BACKGROUND
The neuropathology of Parkinson's disease (PD) associated with leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) mutations (LRRK2-PD) is heterogeneous and varies with the type of mutation. There are only a few studies evaluating seeding aggregation assays to detect α-synuclein (α-syn) in patients with LRRK2-PD.


OBJECTIVE
We aimed to investigate whether α-syn real-time quaking induced conversion (RT-QuIC) is a sensitive biomarker of synucleinopathy in LRRK2-PD.


METHODS
We studied α-syn RT-QuIC in brain tissue and postmortem ventricular cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of LRRK2-PD cases with and without Lewy-type pathology.


RESULTS
The accuracy of α-syn RT-QuIC in substantia nigra and CSF samples of patients with LRRK2-PD was 100%. The test also obtained 100% sensitivity to detect misfolded α-syn in substantia nigra of cases with idiopathic PD and was negative in the substantia nigra of all the control brains without Lewy-type pathology.


CONCLUSIONS
Substantia nigra and ventricular CSF RT-QuIC discriminates with high sensitivity and specificity LRRK2 cases with Lewy-type pathology from those without it. RT-QuIC assay could be of particular interest in the selection of cases for clinical trials in this genetic form of PD. © 2022 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.