Currently, only a small fraction of people with Parkinson’s disease receive genetic testingA higher-than-expected prevalence of gene mutations in Parkinson’s disease patients suggests genetic testing should be offered to them more broadly, researchers said on Monday in the medical journal Brain. Genetic profiling performed in more than 8,000 patients of varying races and ethnicities, all with Parkinson's disease, showed 13 percent had a genetic form of the progressive brain disorder, the researchers found. That rate was 18percent in patients with known risk factors, such as an earlier age at onset, Parkinson’s disease in a first-degree relative, or certain ancestry such as Ashkenazi Jewish, Spanish Basque or North African Berber. Among patients with no known risk factors, more than 9 percent had a predisposing genetic mutation. In the meantime, Beck said, anyone with Parkinson’s disease can enroll in the PDGENE study and receive free genetic testing, here: https://www.parkinson.org/advancing-research/our-research/pdgeneration.
