News

When a person is awake, brain circuit activity is constantly “on.” This activity needs to be normalized during sleep. Researchers now report that neuronal activity in Parkinson’s disease patients with levodopa-induced dyskinesia fails to decrease during sleep. The study, “Levodopa-induced dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease: sleep matters,” was published in…

A new method called DART ensures a compound injected into a region of the brain will affect only specific cell types. This approach was able to reverse Parkinson’s-related motor impairments in mice, and may hold the potential to provide more effective treatments. Although current research techniques such as gene editing and pharmacology…

Levodopa treatment can prevent movement impairment in patients with Parkinson’s disease by increasing overall sensory attenuation, or the ability to fine-tune information received from the senses before a motor action is performed, a study suggests. Based on these findings, researchers suggest that dopamine, which increases as a result of…

Rodin Therapeutics will evaluate a new imaging agent that allows the visualization of human synapses — the junctions between two nerve cells that allow them to communicate — in the living brain. Results from the study will guide the company’s upcoming Phase 1b trial of a new therapeutic compound designed to strengthen…

Dopaminergic medication (i.e., levodopa) for Parkinson’s disease appears to bring sensitivity to negative outcomes in learning down to normal levels, a new study shows. The study, “Dopaminergic medication reduces striatal sensitivity to negative outcomes in Parkinson’s disease,” was published in the journal bioRxiv. The ability to learn from trial…

Spontaneous mutations that occur in DNA before birth — part of cell division and reproduction in the growing brain — can predispose a person to neurodegenerative diseases in adulthood and may be more common than thought, a research team led by the University of Cambridge suggests. Its findings may explain the onset…

While attempting to transform a type of brain cell into neurons, researchers instead discovered they can turn mature neurons — which were previously believed to be unchangeable — into neurons that produce dopamine, the neurotransmitter that is lost in Parkinson’s disease. The incidental discovery has therapeutic implications for Parkinson’s and other…

The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) has introduced a series of educational videos about Parkinson’s disease, as well as a video offering advice to those caring for people with the disorder. November is National Caregivers Month. Called the Whiteboard Series, the short illustrated segments are designed to…

A new transgenic Parkinson’s disease mouse model is able to recapitulate the motor symptoms and biological causes of disease, including alpha-synuclein protein aggregation, a study reports. Similar to Parkinson’s patients, this model also responds to levodopa, one of the main compounds used to treat symptoms of the disease. The study, “Abrogating Native…

Parkinson’s patients carrying two types of genetic polymorphisms — a gene that has more than one variant in a given population — in the dopamine transporter gene are less likely to suffer from involuntary muscle movements associated with levodopa therapy, a study shows. The study, “DAT gene polymorphisms (rs28363170, rs393795)…