News

To help ensure all Parkinson’s patients have the care and support needed to enhance their life quality, the Parkinson’s Foundation has expanded its Global Care Network — launching new centers in five states that had none. In all, the Parkinson’s Foundation opened four Centers of Excellence and six…

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…

Eight weeks of leg strength training failed to prevent sudden drops in blood pressure upon standing, a condition called orthostatic hypotension, in people with Parkinson’s disease, according to a small pilot study. “Further controlled clinical trials with larger sample sizes and sufficient power are required to investigate the effect…

A protein called TMEM175 is critically important for maintaining the proper acidity of lysosomes — cellular compartments that clear waste — and its deficiency led to the buildup of the toxic protein alpha-synuclein in the brains of mice. That finding from a recent study may underlie the previously identified link…

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…

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, 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…

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…

Carrying the G2385R variant in the LRRK2 gene is associated with a three times higher risk of developing Parkinson’s disease among Chinese adults older than 50, according to a 10-year population-based study. Carriers of this mutation who were not diagnosed with Parkinson’s showed a trend toward greater motor…

A tailored three-month boxing exercise program significantly eased both motor and nonmotor symptoms — including depression, anxiety, sleep problems, and pain — in people with early Parkinson’s disease, a new study shows. While the program’s participants reported an improvement in their motivation, there was no evidence that boxing reduced…