News

Practicing Tai Chi four times a week may lessen motor symptoms and improve physical function and quality of life in people with early- to mid-stage Parkinson’s disease, a small clinical trial found. A program combining resistance and stretching exercises produced similar overall improvements in motor symptoms, but each approach…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded fast-track designation — a status that aims to speed the development of promising treatments for serious conditions — to a Swiss biopharmaceutical company for an experimental vaccine designed to slow or prevent neurodegeneration in people with early Parkinson’s disease. The…

People with early Parkinson’s disease who received the oral therapy bezisterim in a Phase 2 clinical trial saw significant improvements in a measure of symptom severity compared with patients given a placebo, top-line results showed. Trial results also showed that bezisterim was generally tolerated well and that the therapy…

A commercially available oral cannabis oil — containing two natural compounds found in the plant, one with psychoactive properties — appeared to be generally safe for people with Parkinson’s disease, but failed to reduce pain or ease other symptoms among participants in a small mid-stage clinical trial. The tested…

People age 67 and older who lived closer to dry cleaners had higher odds of Parkinson’s disease than those who lived farther away, according to a U.S. study. The researchers said exposure to dry-cleaning chemicals such as trichloroethylene (TCE) could help explain the association, but more research is needed.

An off-the-shelf, or ready to use, stem cell therapy that’s designed to replace the nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease and restore neurological function has been put on a developmental fast track by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA awarded fast track status — a designation…

Risvodetinib, an oral therapy Abli Therapeutics is developing for people with Parkinson’s disease, reduced multiple disease-related biomarkers, the company announced. The findings come from an expanded analysis of the 201 Phase 2 study (NCT05424276), which enrolled patients with bradykinesia (slowed movement), a hallmark symptom of Parkinson’s. The trial tested…

Long-term exposure to ozone, a form of air pollution, may increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study from Finland. “In this nationwide register study of long-term exposure to gaseous air pollutants and [Parkinson’s] risk, we observed a borderline statistically significant increased risk for [Parkinson’s]…

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), a technique that uses processed stool from a healthy donor to help restore healthy bacteria in the gut, may provide a small, short-term improvement in daily motor activities for people with Parkinson’s disease, but current evidence does not show sustained benefits for overall motor function,…

Pretreatment with curcumin, a compound found in the spice turmeric, helped protect motor function in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease, a new study found. Findings suggest that curcumin helped protect dopamine-producing nerve cells by activating autophagy, a process cells use to recycle unneeded material. This cellular recycling process,…