News

Mice in a Parkinson’s disease model treated at higher doses with the anti-anxiety medication buspirone had lesser evidence of nerve cell degeneration in the brain and more normalized behaviors than untreated mice, a pair of researchers in Australia reported. “To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the ability…

Winners of the 2022 edition of the $3 million Cure One, Cure Many Award for the early diagnosis of Lewy body dementia (LBD) have been announced by its promoter, the American Brain Foundation. They are the Mayo Clinic’s Owen A. Ross, PhD, Pamela J. McLean, PhD, and…

Older age at disease onset among people with Parkinson’s is associated with a more rapid increase in the severity of motor symptoms, as well as a faster decline in health-related quality of life, a new study found. According to investigators, understanding the factors underlying the development of symptoms “is…

A collaborative effort between researchers in Spain and Norway is helping to enrich an understanding of the regulatory mechanisms behind the production of dopamine, the brain chemical messenger progressively lost in people with Parkinson’s disease. Specifically, the team determined the structure of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) — the rate-limiting enzyme…

Among Parkinson’s patients, those carrying GBA and APOE gene mutations have a significantly faster cognitive decline and a higher risk of progression to dementia, a study in more than 1,000 patients across Northern Europe reported. Notably, the dementia risk was even higher when mutations in both genes were present. No significant associations…

Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sharp drop in admissions to nursing homes and emergency rooms among adults with Parkinson’s disease and those with dementia, according to a new study from Canada. The study also suggests that virtual visits with doctors have become much more common…

Parkinson’s UK and Domainex are teaming up to develop small molecules aimed at lessening chronic brain inflammation and slowing the progression of Parkinson’s disease. “We are thrilled to have been selected by Parkinson’s UK to work on this promising project which has the potential to improve the…

The presence of levodopa-metabolizing bacteria in the intestines of adults using Duodopa (Duopa in the U.S.) to treat their Parkinson’s disease did not affect their blood levels of levodopa, a small study in Japan suggested. Rather, people on this levodopa-carbidopa formulation, administered directly into the small intestine, “can maintain a constant…

A National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant worth $3.2 million will further research into how the rewiring of serotonin-producing nerve cells — a chemical messenger mostly involved in mood, cognition and memory — might help with controlling movement in people with advanced Parkinson’s disease. The grant, given to Christopher…

Although safe and fairly well tolerated, treatment with the over-the-counter supplement mannitol did not lessen symptoms in adults with Parkinson’s disease over 36 weeks, a small Phase 2a clinical trial concluded. Its researchers noted, however, that the study had too few patients to show a statistically significant impact on…