News

Patients Report Higher Stress, Telemedicine Use Due to COVID-19

Expanding telemedicine services and their accessibility could support people with Parkinson’s disease through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond by addressing unmet needs and economic disparities. These are some of the conclusions of a survey conducted by the Parkinson’s Foundation, in collaboration with Columbia University, that revealed key…

Vercise Genus, 4th-generation DBS Treatment, Coming Soon to US

Vercise Genus, a fourth-generation system for deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat people with Parkinson’s disease, is now available in the U.S.,  Boston Scientific, which markets the system, announced. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the system’s conditional use with full-body MRI scans, following a similar…

Disturbed Sleep Common, But Not Tied to Patient’s Sex or Disease Stage

Neither a patient’s sex nor the degree of disease progression substantially affects the manifestations of sleep disturbances in Parkinson’s disease, a study reports. More research into this “very common” and life-affecting problem — and into other non-motor symptoms — of Parkinson’s is needed, its researchers said. The study,…

Vision Test May Predict Cognitive Decline in Parkinson’s Patients

Visual dysfunction and its underlying brain changes can identify Parkinson’s disease patients at higher risk of cognitive decline, who might benefit most from future clinical trials, according to two new studies. The studies, “Organisational and neuromodulatory underpinnings of structural-functional connectivity decoupling in patients with Parkinson’s disease”…

NIH Awards $3.1M to Study Speech in Patients Given DBS Surgery

A branch of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a $3.1 million, multiyear grant to a research team to study changes in speech, and look at movement, in Parkinson’s patients given bilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS). The grant from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) was…