Parkinson Platform Noord Nederland

Neurodegeneration in Parkinson's disease starts years before a clinical diagnosis can be reliably made. The prediagnostic phase of the disease offers a window of opportunity in which disease-modifying therapies—ie, those aimed at delaying or preventing the progression to overt disease and its many complications—could be most beneficial, but no such therapies are available at present. The unravelling of the mechanisms of neurodegeneration from the earliest stages, however, could lead to the development of new interventions whose therapeutic potential will need to be assessed in adequately designed clinical trials.