Patricia Inácio, PhD, science writer —

The Parkinson’s Foundation has joined forces with Tasso — a U.S. company that offers a sample collection and logistics platform for clinical trials — to accelerate genetic research into the underpinnings of Parkinson’s disease. The collaboration will harness Tasso’s patient-friendly blood collection technology to acquire small blood…

A three-week ketogenic diet, one low in carbohydrates and high in fat, supplemented with a specific type of fat — called medium chain triglycerides — showed no significant benefits in easing motor symptoms in a small group of people with Parkinson’s disease, a pilot trial has found. Whether this…

A Phase 1/2 clinical trial dubbed ASPIRO that’s testing Aspen Neuroscience’s ANPD001 — a stem cell therapy candidate designed to replace the nerve cells that are lost in Parkinson’s disease — has dosed its first patient. A first transplant was conducted at the Banner-University Medical Center Tucson by…

Levels of two markers of intestinal inflammation — beta-defensin 2 and lactoferrin — were elevated in the stools of Parkinson’s disease patients when compared with healthy adults, and were associated with a likelihood of developing the disease, a study found. Calprotectin, a marker of tissue inflammation, wasn’t found to…

Among people in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, a tool called trabecular bone score, or TBS, may help detect bone loss sooner than the bone mineral density (BMD) exam that’s the current gold standard, according to researchers. Specifically, the TBS tool may work better in assessing the degradation…

A test that uses skin biopsies was able to detect the form of alpha-synuclein protein that causes toxic clumps in the brain of people with Parkinson’s disease and similar conditions in more than 90% of the patients enrolled in a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored clinical trial.

Note: This story was updated March 27, 2024, to correct that the Michael J. Fox Foundation is not funding the LEARNS study. Merck, known as MSD outside the U.S. and Canada, has joined the observational LEARNS study to investigate the potential of digital biomarkers to evaluate and predict disease…

A $50 million donation to the Baptist Health Foundation is set to expand care for people with Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases across South Florida and to advance research into these disorders. The donation from Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and CEO of the Miami-based hedge fund Citadel,…

U.S.-based Psomagen, a contract research services provider, has announced that it will lead an analysis of data from the 80,000 participants enrolled in the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2) — an initiative seeking a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of Parkinson’s disease. Results from the analysis,…

When asked to quickly assess the number of people in a room, the average person tends to overcount them. In Parkinson’s disease patients with presence hallucinations — the strong sensation of a presence when no one is there — this overestimation is much more heightened when compared with patients…