News

The more anxiety a person feels early in the course of Parkinson’s disease, the less likely that person will stay physically active, which correlates with cognitive impairment. The study with that finding, “Physical activity as a mediator of anxiety and cognitive functioning in Parkinson’s disease,” was…

Seemingly simple reach-to-grasp tasks rely on more complex interactions between two specific types of nerve cells in the basal ganglia — the brain region that controls movement and is mainly affected in Parkinson’s disease — than previously thought, a study in mice shows. The data highlighted that both types…

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, 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…

Sleep problems associated with Parkinson’s disease, as well as ways of managing such problems, were the focus of expert discussion in a recent webinar.  The webinar, “Night Fight with Parkinson’s: Acting Out Dreams, Insomnia and Other Sleep Issues…

Scientists have found evidence that BMP5 and BMP7, two bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) that have been found to play a role in the development of dopamine-producing neurons, may help slow or even stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease. They discovered in a mouse model of Parkinson’s that the two…

A $670,000 grant by the Michael J. Fox Foundation will go toward advancing a technology platform that might lead to a smell test to detect Parkinson’s disease (PD) in its early stages, allowing an earlier start to treatment and, possibly, leading to better therapies. The grant, given to…

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,…

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”…

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…