Forest Ray PhD,  —

Differences in the facial appearance and emotional expressions of people with Parkinson’s disease and  healthy adults were evident to a facial recognition software program, researchers in Japan reported. The program’s algorithm consistently overestimated the age of the nearly 100 patients in this study by a few years, particularly for males, and perceived…

People with type 2 diabetes may have an increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease and for experiencing faster Parkinson’s progression, according to a large-scale analysis of past research. The study, “Type 2 Diabetes as a Determinant of Parkinson’s Disease Risk and Progression,” was published in the…

Three Canadian research centers and one drug discovery firm are collaborating to design new medicines to treat levodopa-induced dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease, according to a press release. Nearly all people with Parkinson’s receive levodopa to treat the movement difficulties caused by the body’s loss of its own…

A plant-derived medicine used to help people stop smoking, known as cytisine, might be neuroprotective and a potential Parkinson’s disease treatment, an animal model study reports. In female mice, the compound appeared to work with estrogen to limit the loss of the dopamine-producing neurons, nerve cells whose death characterizes…

Sesaminol, a waste product of sesame oil production with antioxidant properties that might protect nerve cells, was found to prevent some symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in a mouse model in a recent study. Treated mice, its researchers reported, showed better balance and fewer gastrointestinal issues than mice in this…

A three-year U.K. project will investigate whether weight-shifting strategies, developed and tested using virtual reality, can help people with Parkinson’s disease to overcome freezing of gait — when patients feel like their feet are “glued” to the floor and can’t move forward. If these strategies prove successful in…

Surgeons in Detroit have become the first U.S. team to implant the newest deep brain stimulation (DBS) system — Boston Scientific’s Vercise Genus — in a Parkinson’s disease patient. The device, smaller and thinner than previous models, aims to reduce movement symptoms associated with Parkinson’s by stimulating…

Cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease — especially that based on stem cells — holds great potential but come with significant challenges yet to be overcome. The International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) recently commissioned a report on the state of stem cell therapies in Parkinson’s, to both…

Clusters of Parkinson’s disease correlated significantly with air quality in urban versus more rural areas, a study spanning the Geneva canton of Switzerland reports, lending support to the idea that air pollution contributes to the disorder. The study, “Geospatial analysis of individual-based Parkinson’s disease data supports…

Prolonged, low-level inhalation of the common weed-killer paraquat, implicated in the risk of Parkinson’s disease, caused male mice to lose at least some of their sense of smell, a study reports. This work also supported previous studies showing the inhaled chemical enters the brain via the olfactory nerve.