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Parkinson's & Movement disorders news

Neuroscience

New evidence about dopamine delivery explains why current Parkinson's treatments succeed—and their limitations

A McGill-led study is challenging a popular theory about how dopamine drives movement, a discovery that could shift how scientists think about Parkinson's disease treatments.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

New ALS diagnostic blood test boasts 97% accuracy

ALS is a debilitating paralytic disease characterized as the death of upper and lower motor neurons. Fortunately, ALS is relatively rare, with an incidence rate of 1.6 per 100,000 adults, resulting in about 30,000 cases in ...

Neuroscience

Aging midbrain neurons face energy crisis linked to Parkinson's

Dopamine neurons in a part of the brain called the midbrain may, with aging, be increasingly susceptible to a vicious spiral of decline driven by fuel shortages, according to a study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators. ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Early Parkinson's predictor found in daily step count

Oxford's Big Data Institute and Nuffield Department of Population Health report that daily step counts may help identify who will later be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, with lower activity patterns acting as an early ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

In-home sensor technology offers smarter care for ALS patients

Bill Janes is on a mission to improve life for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). As a licensed occupational therapist and researcher at the University of Missouri, he's seen firsthand how the disease can steal ...

Neuroscience

Brain markers could yield early clues into Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease affects more than 1.1 million people in the United States, progressively damaging the brain cells that control movement. By the time symptoms like tremors appear, patients have already lost around half ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Untreated sleep apnea raises risk of Parkinson's, study finds

New research reveals that people with untreated obstructive sleep apnea have a higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease. However, they can significantly reduce the risk by improving the quality of their sleep by using ...

Neuroscience

Pause and rewind: How the brain keeps time to control action

Whether speaking or swinging a bat, precise and adaptable timing of movement is essential for everyday behavior. Although we do not have sensory organs like eyes or a nose to sense time, we can keep time and control the timing ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Evidence builds for disrupted mitochondria as cause of Parkinson's

For decades, scientists have known that mitochondria, which produce energy inside our cells, malfunction in Parkinson's disease. But a critical question remained: do the failing mitochondria cause Parkinson's, or do they ...

Alzheimer's disease & dementia

What polymers can teach us about curing Alzheimer's disease

Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have applied ideas from polymer physics to illuminate the mechanism behind a key pathology in Alzheimer's disease, the formation of fibrils of tau proteins. They showed that ...

Genetics

New genetic test targets elusive cause of rare movement disorder

Scientists at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School have developed a targeted genetic test to improve diagnosis for X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism (XDP), a rare and disabling movement disorder that affects ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Study: Get moving to put the brakes on early Parkinson's

A new study suggests that people with early-stage Parkinson's disease who regularly got one to two hours of moderate exercise twice a week, like walking or gardening, may have less trouble balancing, walking and doing daily ...

Medical research

Study details lessons learned from remote clinical studies

Traditional, in-person clinical research studies have long been plagued by slow and often unsuccessful recruitment. The limits of site location, which sometimes requires participants to travel long distances, and the reliance ...

Neuroscience

Dementia protein changes discovered in terminal childhood disease

In a world-first, researchers at Newcastle University have found that the brains of infants who sadly passed away with an extremely rare genetic condition, Krabbe disease, have similar changes to those seen in two age-related ...

Medical research

Transforming 'undone science' into 'done science'

Mannitol, a natural sweetener, may help treat Parkinson's disease, yet was not being tested in clinical trials. The story of mannitol is one of many examples of "undone science": research questions unfunded or ignored for ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Parkinson's disease mutation misdirects iron in the brain

A common gene mutation for Parkinson's disease drives mislocalization of iron in activated microglia, according to a new study publishing December 16th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, by Mark Cookson of the National ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Protein test could lead to earlier and better diagnosis of Parkinson's

Scientists at the Oxford Parkinson's Disease Centre (OPDC) have been able to use a highly-sensitive method called α-synuclein real-time quaking-induced conversion (αSyn-RT-QuIC) to observe the clumping of alpha-synuclein ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Are scientists homing in on a cure for Parkinson's disease?

A molecule that shows promise in preventing Parkinson's disease has been refined by scientists at the University of Bath in the UK, and has the potential to be developed into a drug to treat the deadly neurodegenerative disease.

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Study: People with Parkinson's may speak up to 60% less

Parkinson's disease can disrupt multiple aspects of a person's functioning, including the volume, rhythm and intonation of their speech. In some cases, a person with Parkinson's will hesitate to speak or pause when speaking, ...

Neuroscience

Wearable vibration device may ease Parkinson's tremor

Physiotherapist David Putrino was working on a vibrating glove to help deaf people experience live music when a friend mentioned that the same technology might stop tremors in people with Parkinson's disease.