News by Subject Medicine & Health

A new study conducted at the University of Turku, Finland, shows that patients with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder have an increased risk of Parkinson's disease later in life. The increased risk may be due to alterations in the brain's dopamine system caused by dopamine receptor antagonists or neurobiological effects of schizophrenia.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, the University of Milan and Google Research have used machine learning techniques to predict how proteins, particularly those implicated in neurological diseases, completely change their shapes in a matter of microseconds.

A new study from UBC researchers suggests a strong correlation between following the MIND and Mediterranean diets and later onset of Parkinson's disease (PD). While researchers have long known of neuroprotective effects of the MIND diet for diseases like Alzheimer's and dementia, this study is the first to suggest a link between this diet and brain health for Parkinson's disease (PD).

Until now, the reason why the drug levodopa (L-Dopa), which reduces the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, declines in efficacy after a few years' use has been unknown. A side effect that then often occur is involuntary movements. A Swedish-French collaboration, led from Uppsala University, has now been able to connect the problems with defective metabolism of L-Dopa in the brain. The study is published in Science Advances.

A scalpel-free alternative to brain surgery has the potential to benefit people with Parkinson's disease symptoms that are much more severe on one side of the body, new research suggests.

Preclinical data published in Science Translational Medicine showed that post-symptomatic administration of Cyto-111 produced antidotal rescue in three animal species following a lethal botulism challenge. Study authors concluded, " atoxic BoNT derivatives can be harnessed to deliver therapeutic protein moieties to the neuronal cytoplasm where they bind and neutralize intracellular targets in experimental models. The generalizability of this platform might enable delivery of antibodies and other protein-based therapeutics to previously inaccessible intraneuronal targets."

A new study has found that while the prevalence of neurologic conditions like dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS) is consistent across the U.S., the distribution of neurologists is not, and people in more rural areas may be less likely to receive specialty care for certain neurologic conditions. The study, funded by the American Academy of Neurology, is published in the December 23, 2020, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The discovery that toxic stressors can cause errors in gene transcription opens new avenues of research on diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and sheds light on the potential role of the "transcriptome" in aging.