Bioinformatics analysis raises candidate genes in blood for early screening of Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a typical degenerative disease, which is characterized by the most obvious symptoms of movement dysfunction, including shaking, rigidity, slowness of movement and difficulty in walking and gait. This disease can not be clearly identified through laboratory tests at present, thus application of high-throughput technique in studying the expression profiles of PD helps to find the genetic markers for its early diagnosis. Studies on expression profiles of neurodegenerative diseases have revealed the novel genes and pathways involved in the progress of illness. In this study, the expression profiles of PD in blood were compared, showing that 181 differentially expressed genes (DEG) exhibit a similar expression trend both in patients and in normal controls. These genes are enriched significantly in some biological processes, including development, response to drugs, and DNA-dependent regulation of transcription, etc, highlighting that the genetic markers can be used in early diagnosis of PD.