For patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease, the expanded FDA approval of the Exablate Neuro platform allows for the use of MRI-guided focused ultrasound in performing staged bilateral pallidothalamic tractotomy.
Parkinson’s disease often begins asymmetrically, affecting either the right or left side of the body first. Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) have demonstrated that this initial side of onset influences the progression of non-motor symptoms.
A safe and affordable treatment to slow the advancement of Parkinson’s dementia has emerged – in the form of a commonly available cough syrup that’s already being studied for its positive effect on other degenerative diseases.
Ambroxol, long used for coughs in Europe, stabilized symptoms and brain-damage markers in Parkinson’s dementia patients over 12 months, whereas placebo patients worsened. Those with high-risk genes even saw cognitive gains, hinting at real disease-modifying power.
A breakthrough brain scan shows Parkinson’s drugs can misfire in the brain, helping some patients less than others. The fix? Personalized medicine guided by new tech.
Years after pinpointing a faulty protein in the brains of patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, researchers have made another breakthrough. The team at the University of Sydney was able to target this SOD1 protein with a drug treatment in mice. They observed a “dramatic” improvement in their motor skills. Now comes the tricky task of figuring out how to target the SOD1 protein safely in humans, paving the way for a potential treatment to slow progression. Guest/s
Professor Kay Double, Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney References
Copper supplementation mitigates Parkinson-like wild-type SOD1 pathology and nigrostriatal degeneration in a novel mouse model