News

A commercially available oral cannabis oil — containing two natural compounds found in the plant, one with psychoactive properties — appeared to be generally safe for people with Parkinson’s disease, but failed to reduce pain or ease other symptoms among participants in a small mid-stage clinical trial. The tested…

People age 67 and older who lived closer to dry cleaners had higher odds of Parkinson’s disease than those who lived farther away, according to a U.S. study. The researchers said exposure to dry-cleaning chemicals such as trichloroethylene (TCE) could help explain the association, but more research is needed.

An off-the-shelf, or ready to use, stem cell therapy that’s designed to replace the nerve cells lost in Parkinson’s disease and restore neurological function has been put on a developmental fast track by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA awarded fast track status — a designation…

Risvodetinib, an oral therapy Abli Therapeutics is developing for people with Parkinson’s disease, reduced multiple disease-related biomarkers, the company announced. The findings come from an expanded analysis of the 201 Phase 2 study (NCT05424276), which enrolled patients with bradykinesia (slowed movement), a hallmark symptom of Parkinson’s. The trial tested…

Long-term exposure to ozone, a form of air pollution, may increase the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, according to a new study from Finland. “In this nationwide register study of long-term exposure to gaseous air pollutants and [Parkinson’s] risk, we observed a borderline statistically significant increased risk for [Parkinson’s]…

Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), a technique that uses processed stool from a healthy donor to help restore healthy bacteria in the gut, may provide a small, short-term improvement in daily motor activities for people with Parkinson’s disease, but current evidence does not show sustained benefits for overall motor function,…

Pretreatment with curcumin, a compound found in the spice turmeric, helped protect motor function in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease, a new study found. Findings suggest that curcumin helped protect dopamine-producing nerve cells by activating autophagy, a process cells use to recycle unneeded material. This cellular recycling process,…

New funding from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) will support lab studies of a one-time gene therapy candidate for Parkinson’s disease. Shape Therapeutics, a U.S. company that investigates RNA-based therapies, will use the newly awarded research grant to conduct preclinical studies of its…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted regenerative medicine advanced therapy (RMAT) designation to sasineprocel (ANPD001), an experimental cell therapy to treat Parkinson’s disease. The designation, given to promising regenerative therapies (treatments that aim to replace or restore disease-damaged tissue) that could substantially improve care for serious diseases, …

Low dopamine levels disrupt nerve circuits in the brain in Parkinson’s disease — but a new study indicates that different brain circuits show different, even opposite, types of changes. The study’s findings shed new light on how brain circuits are affected by Parkinson’s. The researchers said their data also suggest…