The final objective is to review the evidence from each of
the five experimental studies to investigate the efficacy of using leukocytes
to sense early deviations in bioenergetic levels and changes in metabolic
stress associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. This capability would make
leukocytes a potentially sensitive early biomarker for therapeutic and clinical
intervention in neurodegenerative progression of PD (Braganza, Annarapu, & Shiva, 2020; Kramer, Ravi, Chacko, Johnson,
& Darley-Usmar, 2014).
Statistical Analysis of Leukocyte Early Bio-marker
Correlation analysis will be used to
review OCR and ECAR levels between PD and HC to establish high level
relationships for any bioenergetic dysfunctions/impairment. Any changes
detected will be tested for significance using between and within sample student
t testing. Where patterns of significant change have been observed,
multivariate analysis such as hierarchical and stepwise multiple regression
will be used to factor out confounding patient data (i.e. BMI, weight etc.) and
to investigate the veracity and accuracy of using age related mitochondrial
changes in PD patient leukocytes as a predictor of predisposition for early
development of PD or for increasing changes in the progression of existing PD symptomatology.
