News by Subject Medicine & Health

A theory that Parkinson's disease can arise in the intestinal system and from there migrate to the brain has now gained support from research conducted at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital.

Many patients with concussion have normal CT scans and are discharged from the hospital without follow-up. But a blood test that is currently under development and costs a fraction of the price of a brain scan may flag concussion in these CT-negative patients, enabling them to be evaluated for long-term complications.

Australian researchers are among the first in the world to have access to a new approach to understand intricate changes that control how proteins function in our cells in health and disease. The new proteomics technique called 'ubiquitin clipping' allows researchers to create high-definition maps of how proteins are modified by a process called ubiquitination.

Brain researchers from the University of Copenhagen have invented an inexpensive method to measure tremor as known from Parkinson's disease in mice. The method utilises the accelerometer in a smartphone to measure the tremor. The new invention allows researchers to measure how various medications affect tremors, in a much more affordable and expedient way.

In an Acta Neurologica Scandinavia study of 182 patients with Parkinson's disease and 185 healthy controls, patients with Parkinson's disease had significantly lower levels of vitamin D in their blood. Also, patients with lower vitamin D levels were more likely to fall, and to experience sleep problems, depression, and anxiety.

In an issue on multiomics, researchers report new approaches to study the microbiome, cancer and other diseases by combining proteomics, genomics, transcriptomics and other high-throughput ways to collect data.