Key takeaways:
- Patients with Parkinson’s disease had a thicker inner nuclear layer than matched controls.
- Retinal imaging could help predict, diagnose and track progression of Parkinson’s disease.
DENVER — Retina imaging may reveal links to Parkinson’s disease, according to a poster presentation at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting.
“Some people … would say that the eye is the window into the soul,” Michael Zhu, a medical student at Duke University School of Medicine, told Healio. “We think the eyes are also the window into the brain.”
Image: Anthony DeFino | Healio
Zhu and colleagues conducted a cross-sectional, case-control study that looked at how changes in the retina might be associated with Parkinson’s disease. Zhu said previous research has found links between Parkinson’s and thinning of certain layers of the retina, and in the current study, those potential links were explored by comparing 43 adult patients with Parkinson’s disease and 43 controls matched for age and sex.
The researchers used OCT to quantify retinal layer thickness in six layers of the retina and measured mean thickness within the 3- and 6- mm circles of the ETDRS grid, according to the study.
“Other people have described thinning of the layers,” Zhu said. “We actually found a thickening of some of the layers. In particular, the inner nuclear layer was significantly thicker in our patient population than in age- and sex-matched controls.”
In the group with Parkinson’s disease, mean thickness in the 6-mm ETDRS circle of the inner nuclear layer was 31.7 µm compared with 30.52 µm in the control group (P = .039), according to the study.
There was also a trend toward thickening in the ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer and the retinal pigment epithelium, according to Zhu.
“We’re not quite sure why this is the case,” Zhu told Healio. “We think it might be because we are looking at an early-stage Parkinson’s cohort, so it is possible that before you have the atrophic thinning of the retina, you might actually have some swelling or neuroinflammation, which causes some early thickening.”
Zhu said the findings could have implications in the future of neurology and ophthalmology, possibly leading to better diagnosis and progression tracking in Parkinson’s disease.
“OCT imaging is very common in ophthalmology clinics but pretty rare in neurology clinics,” he said. “It does raise the possibility that this ophthalmic imaging can be useful in predicting, diagnosing or tracking disease progression. And so, ophthalmologists play a part in interpreting these findings and in helping us understand what really is going on in each of these retinal layers.”
Sources/Disclosures
Source:
Zhu M, et al. Macular retinal layer thickness in early Parkinson’s disease. Presented at: Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting; May 3-7, 2026; Denver.
Disclosures:
Zhu reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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