U.S. researchers recently announced that they have developed a new technique that could help diagnose Parkinson’s disease before symptoms show. Their findings were published in the Lancet Neurology journal.

The research from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, a biomarker study sponsored by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), confirms the most significant breakthrough yet in the search for a Parkinson’s biomarker: a biological test for Parkinson’s disease that demonstrates high diagnostic accuracy, differentiates molecular subtypes, and detects disease in individuals before cardinal movement symptoms arise.

Read more about the research in The Guardian and in a news release from the The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

The Clinical Trials Statistical & Data Management Center (CTSDMC), based in the Department of Biostatistics in the UI College of Public Health, serves as both the statistics core and data management core for the research project. CTSDMC staff member and biostatistics graduate student David-Erick LaFontant led the analyses for the paper, and several others from the CTSDMC contributed to the paper.