Genetic research on Parkinson's disease in India gets US grant

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: An Indo-German collaborative research proposal titled Genetic Architecture of Parkinson's disease in India, led by the comprehensive care centre for movement disorders in Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) and the Centre for Genetic Epidemiology, University of Tuebingen, Germany, has a received a grant of US $2.3 million from the Michel J Fox Foundation, USA.

The research was submitted by Dr Manu Sharma from the University of Tubingen, Germany and Dr Asha Kishore, movement disorders specialist and director of SCTIMST. ``This will be the first Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) on Parkinsons disease (PD) in India and one of the largest GWAS conducted in the country,'' said Dr Asha Kishore, director SCTIMST.

GWAS in western population and east Asian regions have identified about 20 or more genetic variants as risk factors for Parkinson's disease. As ethnically diverse populations vary in terms of the frequency of these variants in the population, it is necessary to conduct GWAS of Parkinson's disease in India to capture the genetic variants that pose a risk for Parkinson's disease among Indian patients underrepresented in western studies, said Dr Asha Kishore.

The aim of this research is to identify genetic risk factors of Parkinson's disease in India through a GWAS. Approximately a half-million genetic markers will be assessed to identify the Indian Parkinson's disease population-specific risk variants. To meet our objectives, more than 10,000 patients and 10,000 healthy controls will be recruited from across India to define a pan-Indian Parkinson's disease map for the Indian population, she added.

A consortium of movement disorder specialists, neurologists and geneticists from 20 Indian centres are co-investigators in the multicentre international study along with the team in Germany led by Dr. Manu Sharma.

Besides SCTIMST as the lead nodal centre in India, AIIMS New Delhi, NIMHANS Bangalore and Nizams Institute of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad will participate as nodal centres. Apart from this 16 sub-centres will conduct the molecular biological and advanced analytics of the genetic data.

Parkinson's disease is a disabling and progressive degenerative neurological disease with a prevalence of about 1% in people over 60 years and 4% in people over the age of 85. A clear hereditary cause of the disease is found only in 5 to 10% of patients. In the remaining, it is considered sporadic and probably caused by an interaction of genetic susceptibility and environmental factors.