News

Nearly 90,000 people, 65 or older, are diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease every year in the U.S., representing an increase of about 50% relative to previous estimates of the disease’s incidence, a study showed. “These updated estimates of incidence are necessary for understanding disease risk, planning health care delivery, and…

SLS-004, Seelos Therapeutics‘ investigational gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, lowered alpha-synuclein levels and prevented the degeneration of dopamine-producing, or dopaminergic, neurons in a mouse model of the disease, the company announced. A hallmark of the neurodegenerative disease, the loss of dopaminergic neurons in a brain region called the…

Clinical Ink is partnering with a “leading biopharmaceutical organization” to monitor symptoms of people with Parkinson’s disease at home and clinical sites in the U.S. and Europe using the company’s technology. This will be part of a late-phase clinical development program, in which symptoms of Parkinson’s patients will…

Top-line results are expected next month from a Phase 2b clinical trial testing whether the investigational oral therapy mesdopetam can ease levodopa-induced dyskinesia, or involuntary movements, in people with Parkinson’s disease. IRLAB Therapeutics, the therapy’s original developer and sponsor of the trial, announced that the final participant…

Among people diagnosed with melanoma, a type of skin cancer, the tumor is twice as likely to be found along the head or neck if they also have Parkinson’s disease, a study found. These findings support the importance of screening these regions for more accurate melanoma surveillance in Parkinson’s…

Nitrase Therapeutics has partnered with HitGen in the search for novel therapies that suppress nitrases, a class of enzymes discovered by Nitrase. Nitrases are responsible for nitration, a type of biochemical modification of proteins that is linked to cellular stress and can change that protein’s structure, function, and…

Both type 2 diabetes and prediabetes — a condition in which blood sugar levels are abnormally high, but not high enough to constitute diabetes — are significantly associated with poorer cognition in people with Parkinson’s disease, according to a small study from South Korea. These findings add to previous…

Using amantadine — a parkinsonian medication that has also antiviral activity — does not reduce the occurrence of COVID-19 or its severity among people with Parkinson’s disease, a Polish study found. Rather, the researchers observed that COVID-19 was less common among people over age 50 age, and those with…

Deferiprone, an iron chelator (binder) therapy, does not slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease in newly diagnosed patients who have never received treatment, according to data from a Phase 2 clinical trial. Instead, after about nine months of treatment in these patients, deferiprone was associated with a worsening of…

Levels of alpha-synuclein, beta-amyloid, and neurofilament light chain (NfL) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord can help identify Parkinson’s disease and distinguish it from atypical parkinsonism, according to a review study. The study, “A meta-analysis of the diagnostic…