Marisa Wexler, MS, senior science writer —

The Syn-One test, which uses a skin biopsy to look for atypical clumps of the protein alpha-synuclein, may help both in confirming a diagnosis and guiding treatment decisions for people being evaluated for Parkinson’s disease, new data show. “Skin biopsies are minimally invasive and, our study showed, very effective…

AB-1005, an experimental gene therapy administered directly into the brain, helped ease motor symptoms in patients with moderate Parkinson’s disease, whereas it appeared to stabilize disease progression for those with mild disease in a small Phase 1 clinical trial. No serious safety issues were reported for the 11…

A new treatment that delivers healthy mitochondria to damaged nerve cells showed promise in cell and animal models of Parkinson’s disease, a study shows. “[T]he study findings provide evidence that mitochondria transplantation can be developed as a novel therapeutic for” Parkinson’s, researchers wrote in “Mitochondrial transplantation…

A new machine learning model is able to identify Parkinson’s disease more accurately than other models based on electroencephalography (EEG) readings of the brain’s electrical activity, a study found. “The proposed model holds promising potential as a valuable and enduring aid for experts and clinicians in diagnosing” Parkinson’s, researchers…

Anxiety is common among people with Parkinson’s disease and contributes to a worse life quality for patients irrespective of motor symptom severity, according to a new German study. Nearly 40% of the patients in the small study were found to have clinically relevant anxiety — and those with more…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it needs more information before deciding whether to approve the apomorphine infusion pump SPN-830 for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, according to a press release from the device’s developer Supernus Pharmaceuticals. In a complete response letter (CRL) to…

Treatment with lixisenatide, a medication approved for type 2 diabetes, significantly slowed the progression of motor symptoms in people with Parkinson’s disease in a Phase 2 clinical trial. Although gastrointestinal side effects such as nausea and vomiting were more common with the therapy, the findings support lixisenatide as a potential…

Scientists at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) released the first images of a live human brain acquired with the world’s most powerful MRI scanner, the Iseult MRI machine. “With the Iseult project, a whole new world is opening up before our eyes, and we are excited…

People with REM sleep behavior disorder, a condition that often precedes Parkinson’s disease, frequently have mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage, a study found. “Patients with REM sleep behavior disorder, both those who subsequently developed Parkinson’s disease and those who did not, had more mitochondrial DNA circulating in the cerebrospinal fluid…

Fecal microbiota transplant, a procedure that works to replace a person’s gut bacteria with gut bacteria from a healthy donor, may help ease motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, a small clinical trial found. Transplant “offers the advantages of being considered safe based on experience in other indications, and being…