Whether they are tears of happiness or sadness, tear fluid contains a lot of information. Biochemist Marlies Gijs has known this for some time. But the wealth of that information goes very far, as Gijs discovered with her colleagues at the University Medical Center in Maastricht. “We can analyze tear fluid in a lab, just like we now do with blood. We can see in this which disease you have,” she says in “New facts” on Radio 1.
She is not talking about a cold, but about brain disorders. “More specifically, Alzheimer’s disease, but also Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.” For these conditions, disease-specific substances can be found in tear fluid, the researchers determined.
“We don’t yet know how these substances end up in the tear fluid,” says Gijs. Although there are suspicions. “It is known that the eyes and brain are very closely linked, so it is not that surprising. During embryonic development, eyes are formed from brains. So they are made up of the same cells.”
2023-12-04 17:09:00
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