Patricia Inácio, PhD,  science writer—

Scientists have discovered a new regulator — called NHR-49 — that may shed light and open potential new therapeutic avenues to prevent the formation of toxic protein clumps, a hallmark of aging-related diseases, including Parkinson’s disease. Using embryos of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, they found that NHR-49 is activated…

Mission Therapeutics has received $5.2 million from The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) and Parkinson’s UK to start clinical testing MTX325, its experimental and neuron-protective oral therapy, in people in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. “This significant grant, from two of the world’s leading Parkinson’s disease…

BrainTale’s noninvasive imaging analysis software, BrainTale-care, may be able to distinguish Parkinson’s disease from atypical parkinsonism. That’s according to data from an advanced MRI technique, called diffusion tensor imaging, that measures the diffusion of water molecules in the brain’s white matter. White matter contains nerve fibers…

An imaging agent for positron emission tomography (PET) scans allowed researchers to visualize, for the first time, abnormal alpha-synuclein protein clumps in the brains of living patients with Parkinson’s disease, a study showed. By detecting a hallmark feature of Parkinson’s found in relatively lower abundance in the brain compared…

Scientists at the Imperial College London in England have been awarded nearly £100,000, or about $125,000, by Parkinson’s UK to identify new therapeutic targets for Parkinson’s disease. The grant was awarded to Michael Johnson, PhD, and his team, and will fund efforts to harness the power of computers…

Remote assessments using smartphones and smartwatches could be used to detect and monitor changes in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, according to findings from the WATCH-PD study. Over the course of one-year of follow-up, an Apple Watch paired with an iPhone was able to…

Early preliminary data from a pilot study by Stimvia shows a noninvasive neuromodulation device known as URIS eased symptoms among participants in a pilot clinical trial and may serve as an add-on treatment for Parkinson’s disease. The device’s developer plans to release the complete data in the coming months. “We…

A group of light-responsive receptors in nerve cells called kalium channelrhodopsins can effectively turn off nerve cells in the brain, offering a potential way for scientists to dissect the mechanisms underlying brain function and what goes awry in diseases like Parkinson’s, a study found. The study, “…

Heavy coffee consumption results in lower dopamine activity in the striatum, a brain region affected in Parkinson’s disease, and does not ease motor symptoms in early diagnosed patients who have not yet been treated for the neurological disease, a study has found. However, coffee consumption before brain imaging was…

People who carry the G2019S mutation in the LRRK2 gene, the most common one associated with Parkinson’s disease, have a 10 times higher risk of developing the disease, but the risk increases to 27 times if mutations in other genes are also present. G2019S carriers developed the disease earlier, but, despite…