Parkinson’s disease affects around one million people in the US and between seven and ten million worldwide. In people with Parkinson’s disease, the neurons in the brain that produce dopamine die off. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical that helps send messages in the brain. It is involved in many functions such as movement, reward,...
Tag: <span>Parkinson’s disease</span>
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Cooling ‘brains on fire’ to treat Parkinson’s
A promising new therapy to stop Parkinson’s disease in its tracks has been developed at The University of Queensland. UQ Faculty of Medicine researcher Associate Professor Trent Woodruff said the team found that a small molecule, MCC950, stopped the development of Parkinson’s in several animal models. The NLRP3 inflammasome (green) is expressed by immune cells...
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Heteractis magnifica sea anemones can help fight the Alzheimer’s disease
They contain neuroprotective peptides that slow down the inflammation process and the deterioration of neurons causing the development of Alzheimer’s Heteractis magnifica sea anemones contain neuroprotective peptides that slow down the inflammation process and the deterioration of neurons causing the development of Alzheimer’s. There is currently no treatment for this disease. IMAGE: A MAGNIFICENT SEA ANEMONE RIDING THE CURRENT AT MADIVARU MANTA POINT. The Kunitz-type...
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Researchers examining Parkinson’s resilience
Diseases have a spectrum of risk, even those partially embedded in genes such as Parkinson’s disease. C. elegans, seen here as hundreds living on a plate viewed through the lens of a microscope, share roughly half their genes with humans. Credit: the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa Less than 10 percent of those with Parkinson’s...
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Breathalyser detects Parkinson’s disease with more than 80% accuracy in at-risk people: Early diagnosis helps to prevent devastating symptoms
Parkinson’s occurs when nerve cells that produce the chemical dopamine die By the time of diagnosis, most of these nerve cells have already died This limits patients’ treatment options and causes their symptoms to worsen Device is better than standard diagnosis smell test, which is 73% accurate Parkinson’s affects one in 500 people in the...
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Is Parkinson’s an autoimmune disease? More evidence emerges
Researchers in Germany have found further evidence to support the idea that Parkinson’s could be an autoimmune disease. Using a stem cell model, they showed how immune cells attacked dopamine-producing cells derived from people with Parkinson’s disease but not from people without it. Dopamine is a chemical messenger that supports many important brain functions. These include functions that deal with...
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Alzheimer’s disease—why insulin is a new suspect
Johnson and Johnson recently announced that it was halting a clinical trial for a new Alzheimer’s drug after safety issues emerged. This latest failure adds to the dozens of large, costly clinical trials that have shown no effect in treating this devastating disease. The growing list of failures should give us pause for thought – have we...
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First photoactive drug to fight Parkinson’s disease
An international team has designed the first potentially therapeutic photoactive drug, MRS7145, to fight Parkinson’s disease, according to the new article in Journal of Controlled Release. This compound, which proved effective in laboratory animals in vivo, has been carried out by a team led by Francisco Ciruela, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of...
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Smartphone ‘scores’ can help doctors track severity of Parkinson’s disease symptoms
Parkinson’s disease, a progressive brain disorder, is often tough to treat effectively because symptoms, such as tremors and walking difficulties, can vary dramatically over a period of days, or even hours. To address this challenge, Johns Hopkins University computer scientists, working with an interdisciplinary team of experts from two other institutions, have developed a new...
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New findings point to potential therapy for Parkinson’s Disease
Partial inhibition of the interaction between calcineurin and FKBP12, with low doses of the FDA-approved compound Tacrolimus, protect neurons against the toxic effects of a-synuclein, a protein critically implicated in Parkinson’s disease. A new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), sheds light on a mechanism underlying Parkinson’s disease and suggests that...