News

AbbVie and Voyager Therapeutics have extended their collaboration to co-develop and commercialize antibodies that target the toxic forms of alpha-synuclein to treat Parkinson’s disease and other synucleinopathies. The collaboration will combine AbbVie’s expertise in monoclonal antibodies with Voyager’s gene therapy platform to deliver antibodies across the blood-brain barrier…

Some 10 percent of Parkinson’s patients carry a mutation in the GBA gene, making it the most common genetic risk for this disease. With a goal of learning more about these mutations, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) and the Silverstein Foundation for Parkinson’s with…

A tool called Vercise Cartesia Directional Lead is intended to provide more precise deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatment for people with Parkinson’s disease. Researchers at UHealth — University of Miami Health System recently became the first in the Eastern U.S. and the second in the country to…

A palm-worn device can quantify joint stiffness in Parkinson’s disease patients by tracking changes in rigidity following treatment with deep brain stimulation, and may be of use in measuring fluctuations in motor symptoms, scientists who created the tool report. Their study, “A Palm-Worn Device to Quantify Rigidity in…

Although exercise is beneficial for patients at all stages of Parkinson’s disease, a regular routine should be in place before movement issues become pronounced, an expert who led a presentation hosted by The Parkinson Voice Project advises. The theme of the free Feb. 9 talk by Michael Braitsch,…

Discoveries into molecular mechanisms, risk factors — especially genetic — and advances in potential and repurposed therapies for Parkinson’s disease over the last 20 years are reason to believe that major breakthroughs await the next two decades, a review article by two researchers states. The review article, “Therapies to…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers, physicians, and health care providers that infusions of plasma from young donors for the treatment of normal aging or diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s are not approved and have not undergone the agency’s rigorous testing for efficacy…

People who have had kidney, heart, lung, or bone-marrow transplants are less likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than the general population, research suggests. The study, “Transplant and risk of Parkinson disease” was published recently in Parkinsonism & Related Disorders.  Chronic neuroinflammation is a hallmark of Parkinson’s disease with…

Cell replacement therapies in which dopamine-producing stem cells are transplanted into Parkinson’s disease patients could improve motor symptoms, reducing or eliminating the need for dopaminergic medicines, a study suggests. The study, “Repairing the Brain: Cell Replacement Using Stem Cell-Based Technologies,” was published in the Journal of …

Naturally occurring gene variations in brain cells may explain why dopamine-producing neurons are the first to die in people with Parkinson’s, according to a new study. The findings also suggest that brain regions with a greater number of these variations are more likely to undergo cell death later in…