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With a treatment not yet within reach that might slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease, much less offer a cure, many — doctors, patients, and researchers alike — are looking to exercise in hopes of fending off a worsening of symptoms. Interest in exercise-based interventions has risen so much that…

Although the structure of dopaminergic neurons gradually deteriorates before cell death, these alterations do not seem to account for the subtle impairments seen during the early stages of Parkinson’s disease, a mouse study has found. The study, “Progressively Disrupted Somatodendritic Morphology in Dopamine Neurons in a Mouse Parkinson’s…

Mission Therapeutics and AbbVie have established a new partnership aimed at developing specific inhibitors targeting deubiquitylating enzymes, or DUBs, for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. DUBs are a large family of important enzymes that regulate the protein degradation process, some of which are involved in the…

Treatment with PF-360, an investigational leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) inhibitor, can efficiently decrease LRRK2’s phosphorylation levels, known to be elevated in Parkinson’s patients, in the brains of a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease, a preclinical study reports. However, despite some observed dose-dependent therapeutic effects, including gait improvement, no robust changes…

Measuring blood levels of the signaling molecule CXCL12 and its receptor CXCR4 may help identify active inflammation in Parkinson’s disease patients, a study suggests. The study, “CXCL12 and CXCR4 in the Peripheral Blood of Patients with Parkinson’s Disease,” was published in Neuroimmunomodulation. CXCL12 is a small…

Inhibiting an enzyme called USP13 may represent an attractive therapeutic target for Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, preclinical data suggests. These findings also could hold important implications for a therapy currently being developed to treat Parkinson’s disease — nilotinib. The study, “Ubiquitin specific protease-13 independently regulates parkin…

Severe motor, functional, and gait impairment; cumulative levodopa exposure; anxiety, and sex are among the risk factors for developing levodopa-induced dyskinesia (LID) in people newly diagnosed  with Parkinson’s disease, according to results from the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI). The research, “Risk factors of…

Researchers have developed a system — a mobile app and two websites — based on musical stimuli to improve gait and reduce freezing episodes in Parkinson’s disease patients, according to a study describing the design process of the new approach. The project, called BeatHealth, involved patients, caregivers, and health professionals…

Precursors of dopamine-producing cells were implanted into the brain of a Parkinson’s patient for the first time. The patient in Japan is the first of seven to receive this experimental therapy. The approach uses induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are developed by reprogramming cells collected from the skin…

An investigational vaccine being developed by United Neuroscience (UNS) presented several advantages over traditional vaccines to treat progressive disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, according to preclinical data. The vaccine, called UB-312, was more selective to prevent toxic aggregates of alpha-synuclein in mouse models of the disease. These latest findings were…