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July 9 Free Program to Address Racial Disparities in Parkinson’s

A July 9 event aimed at African Americans will underscore the importance of an early Parkinson’s disease diagnosis and specialized healthcare, while addressing institutional biases and myths that can impede such detection and treatment. The free program, called “Parkinson’s Disease and the African  American Community,” will be held in…

Scientists Develop Blood Test With Promise for Early Diagnosis

Scientists in Germany have developed the first highly sensitive test to detect altered alpha-synuclein proteins in blood samples from patients with Parkinson’s disease. The test accurately distinguishes people with Parkinson’s from those without the disease and has the potential to detect the disease early, before symptoms start, according to…

Study Explores New Way to Monitor Neuroinflammation

Overactivation of microglia cells — known to drive neuroinflammation in diseases like Parkinson’s — can be detected by measuring a panel of different proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the liquid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, a study reports. The finding supports the potential of these proteins as…

ABBV-951 Extends ‘On’ Time More Than 3 Hours a Day

ABBV-951, AbbVie‘s experimental under-the-skin formulation of levodopa/carbidopa, was generally well-tolerated and increased average “on” time by more than three hours among people with Parkinson’s disease. Those results from a Phase 3 open-label clinical trial were shared at the 8th European Academy of Neurology (EAN) Congress in Vienna, Austria, in…

Supercomputer Simulations Shed Light on Dopamine Release

Proteins involved in nerve cell communication — via the release of signaling molecules such as dopamine, which is abnormally low in people with Parkinson’s disease — are “spring-loaded” in advance of a triggering signal by calcium, supercomputer simulations showed. These findings, which were consistent with current experimental data, may help…