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Cocaine eye drops may help detect Parkinson’s disease
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A neurological disease may be diagnosed via cocaine eye drops, researchers in Japan suggest.
Shun Shimohama, MD, PhD, and colleagues at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine studied 38 patients with Parkinson’s disease, 20 controls and 10 people with multiple system atrophy. All participants had baseline pupil diameters read using an infrared videocamera in fixed daylight brightness.
Each participant was given phenylephrine solution in both eyes, and diameters were recorded 60 minutes later. After 72 hours, the same amount of a 5% cocaine solution was administered in each eye with the diameter measured 60 minutes later.
Cocaine-induced dilation was significantly less in the group with Parkinson’s disease than in the other groups, the researchers found. The difference between phenylephrine-induced and cocaine-induced dilation was greater in the Parkinson’s group than in the control or multiple system atrophy group, they found.
“This eye drop test is a potential diagnostic tool for Parkinson’s disease,” said Dr. Shimohama in a letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association and reported in HealthDay. Dr. Shimohama and others acknowledged the sample size of the trial was limited and suggested the scientific community conduct a larger-scale clinical study on the topic.