Marisa Wexler, MS,  senior science writer—

Nearly all participants in the SPARK clinical trial had evidence of abnormal dopamine activity on a brain scan known as DaT-SPECT, for dopamine transporter single-photon emission computed tomography, according to a new study. Thus, these results suggest that DaT-SPECT — sometimes used as a biomarker in recruiting participants for clinical…

The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is expanding to enroll up to 100,000 people with and without Parkinson’s disease through an online portal. This expanded PPMI study (NCT04477785) is particularly seeking to enroll people who were diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the past two years and are not…

People with the most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis, may be at increased risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a study from the U.K. This result is in line with an earlier study from Taiwan. Based on these findings, “measures aiming at the prevention of Parkinson’s disease should be…

Because people with Parkinson’s disease tend to take shorter steps and move more slowly, they get less of a “pendulum-like” effect helping their movements, which makes their gait less efficient and ultimately uses more energy, a small study suggests. Its findings also indicate that Nordic walking — walking with…

People with early- or late-onset Parkinson’s disease tend to have different characteristic changes in their speech, according to a new study. The study, “Distinct patterns of speech disorder in early-onset and late-onset de-novo Parkinson’s disease,” was published recently in npj Parkinson’s Disease. As many as nine in…

Mitochondrial dysfunction in dopamine-producing brain cells is sufficient to cause Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study done in mice. The study, “Disruption of mitochondrial complex I induces progressive parkinsonism,” was published in Nature. Parkinson’s is caused by the death and dysfunction of dopamine-producing (dopaminergic) neurons.

Treatment with the investigational therapy CST-103 increased blood flow to certain regions of the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease and mild cognitive impairment, results of a small clinical trial show. The type of increased blood flow that was seen “correlates with increased neuronal activity and cognitive benefit,” Gabriel…

The active agent in Solace PS128, a probiotic sold by Oryx Biomedical, eased disease symptoms and improved life quality in 25 people with Parkinson’s disease given the supplement in a small, open-label clinical trial. “Solace PS128 is the result of more than 20 years of scientific research,” David…

ABBV-951, an under-the-skin formulation of levodopa/carbidopa, outperformed the standard oral therapy at controlling Parkinson’s symptoms in advanced disease patients in a Phase 3 clinical trial, top-line results show. “These data are promising and demonstrate positive results on a key endpoint used to assess efficacy of treatments for patients with…

More research is needed to understand how alpha-synuclein — a protein whose accumulation is characteristic of Parkinson’s disease — affects cells other than nerve cells, particularly microglia, the resident immune cell of the brain. A pair of researchers at the Van Andel Institute in Michigan raised this argument after…