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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

Telehealth use up markedly among Parkinson patients

Parkinson disease (PD) symptoms and management practices were markedly affected by COVID-19, according to a study published online Jan. 21 in npj Parkinson's Disease.

Medical research

Geospatial data helps to better understand Parkinson's disease

In a new paper, a team of EPFL spatial-analysis experts and neurologists from Geneva University Hospital (HUG) show that the probability of developing Parkinson's disease is higher in the canton of Geneva's urban centers ...

Neuroscience

Prostate drug associated with lower risk of Parkinson's disease

Taking a particular type of medication to treat enlarged prostate is associated with a reduced risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a large observational study led by researchers at the University of Iowa, ...

Medications

New Parkinson's disease therapeutics discovered

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers have discovered that the protein BMP5/7 offers promising therapeutics that could slow down or halt the progression of Parkinson's disease. The findings were published in the ...

Medications

Investigational ALS drug pridopidine enters trial

In 2020, the Sean M. Healey & AMG Center at Massachusetts General Hospital launched the first platform trial for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), in which multiple treatments are tested and evaluated simultaneously to ...

Parkinson's & Movement disorders

Transforming treatments for Parkinson's disease

A revolutionary approach to targeting and treating walking problems in people with Parkinson's disease is being developed at Northumbria University, Newcastle.