Inês Martins, PhD, managing science editor —

Treatment with IRLAB Therapeutics‘ small molecule IRL752 is safe and well-tolerated by Parkinson’s disease patients with dementia, and may help manage symptoms that are unresponsive to levodopa, results from a Phase 2a trial show. In particular, the treatment was found to reduce apathy, improve balance, and…

The Goalkeeper Game, a video game in which people assume the role of a goalkeeper in a soccer penalty shootout, may be a novel tool to detect early decline in gait performance in Parkinson’s disease patients, helping them receive treatment sooner, a study suggests. The test is designed…

Researchers at the University of Florida have developed a non-invasive way of following disease progression in Parkinson’s, and its related conditions, that uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The method is expected to soon be used in a clinical trial, and appears to be a way of evaluating the efficacy of experimental treatments to slow…

Using a laboratory model of Parkinson’s disease, researchers have shown how abnormal α-synuclein aggregates gradually spread from an area involved in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease (PD) to other regions of the brain that are eventually damaged by the disease. The study, “Widespread transneuronal propagation of α-synucleinopathy…

Diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s are associated with the formation of large protein aggregates that disrupt a variety of cellular functions. Now, researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT have developed a new system called yeast Transcriptional Reporting of Aggregating Proteins, or yTRAP, that can rapidly screen millions of…

Studies of the fruit fly, or Drosophila melanogaster, have shown that a protein called clueless, or clu, is associated with the mitochondrial defects observed in Parkinson’s disease patients. The study showing that clu mutations lead to muscle degeneration, “Drosophila clueless is involved in Parkin-dependent mitophagy by promoting VCP-mediated Marf…

A pilot study found that a nasal spray may be a promising and quickly effective way of delivering glutathione (GSH), and of increasing GSH levels in the brain of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. The study, “Central nervous system uptake of intranasal glutathione in Parkinson’s disease,” was published in the journal NPJ Parkinson’s…

Exposure to the commonly used pesticide ziram may be linked to Parkinson’s disease development by inducing α-synuclein expression and damages to the dopaminergic neurons. The findings have been published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in the study “Neurotoxicity of the Parkinson’s Disease associated Pesticide Ziram…

A specific mutation commonly found in Parkinson’s patients has been shown to enhance the expression of α-synuclein (SNCA), a key gene involved in the pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease. These findings were published in Nature, in the study “Parkinson-associated risk variant in distal enhancer of α-synuclein modulates target gene expression.” Genome-wide association studies…

Inhibitors of the JAK/STAT pathway may provide potential for treating patients with neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson’s, by reducing the degenerative inflammation in the brain according to the study “Inhibition of the JAK/STAT pathway protects against α-synuclein-induced neuroinflammation and dopaminergic neurodegeneration“, published May 4 in The…