Promising New Test for Parkinson's Disease ?

  According to a preliminary study presented at the 70th American Academy of Neurology annual meeting certain proteins in tears may be useful biomarkers.
  Researchers at USC found the levels of total alpha-synuclein to be decreased in patients with Parkinson's disease compared to healthy controls.
  But levels of oligomeric alpha-synuclein were increased in those with Parkinson's disease compared to controls.
  It has been a longstanding challenge to differentiate patient's with Parkinsonism related to another illness from those with Parkinson's disease early on. This may help neurologist's make a diagnosis sooner as we anxiously await a cure.
AAN Annual Meeting Los Angeles 2018

Worsened Parkinson's Disease with Low B 12

   Folks with early untreated Parkinson's disease with low vitamin B12 (less than 157 pmol/L) were found to have greater worsening of mobility and cognitive decline over time.
  Further, elevated homocysteine predicted greater cognitive decline.
Mov Disord. 2018 Mar 6

Reduce Parkinson's Disease Risk: Truncal Vagotomy ?

  Researchers out of Sweden reviewed patients that underwent truncal vagotomy (a surgical procedure that functionally disconnects multiple abdominal organs by cutting the vagus nerve supply to them) and found a decreased risk of developing Parkinson's disease compared to controls. In fact there was a greater decreased risk in those that underwent selective vagotomy (which disconnects only the stomach).
  These findings offer further support for the Braak hypothesis that Parkinson's disease starts in the gut and spreads to the brain.
Neurology 2017Apr 26

Is Parkinson's Disease an Autoimmune Disease?

  Following up an earlier study, researchers at Columbia and La Jolla have discovered a population of T cells in the blood of patients with Parkinson's disease that recognize alpha-synuclein peptides providing evidence that PD may be,in part,an autoimmune disease, and autoimmune targeted treatment could potentially slow or stop the disease process.
Nature 2017;Epub 2017 Jun21
Nat Commun 2014;5:3633

Phenylbutyrate : A Promising Treatment for Parkinson's Disease

  University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers have found that phenylbutyrate stops the progression of PD in mice. The drug, previously approved for treatment of a rare metabolic disease in infants, has been found to increase alpha-synuclein in the bloodstream of both patients with early PD and age matched controls. Alpha-synuclein accumulates in excess in the brain's of patients with PD. Therefore, the finding of an increase in alpha-synuclein in the blood of phenylbutyrate treated patients with PD suggests that this protein that accumulates in excess in their brain's is being cleared by the drug. This new research follows the earlier study of Zhou as published in 2011.
http://bit.ly/NT-SfN-phenylbutyrate
J Biol Chem 2011;286:1491-1451

Eat Your Nicotine Containing Veggies and Decrease Parkinson's Risk

  In a population based study of 490 newly diagnosed patients with Parkinson's disease and 644 healthy controls, patients that consumed fruits and vegetables that contain nicotine ie. from the same botanical family as tobacco, Solanaceae, including peppers (especially peppers), tomatoes and potatoes.
Annals of Neurology May 9, 2013

Non-melanoma Skin Cancer Decreases Risk of Alzheimer's

  Those older than 70 years that develop non-melanoma skin cancer have a dramatically decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease in a study of 1,102 patients.
Neurology May 15, 2013
  Conversely, it is known that patients with Parkinson's disease have a higher-than-expected frequency of melanoma and patients with melanoma are more likely to develop PD.
Int J Cancer. 2011 May 15; 128(10):2251-60

Immuno-therapy For Parkinson's Disease ?

   From the labs of the University of Pennsylvania comes an important supportive paper to the growing body of evidence that alpha-synuclein (AS) travels through the brain in a prion-like manner effecting anatomically connected regions, inducing Lewy body formation and causing the cell death of dopaminergic neurons.
   This study suggests that "templated recruitment and transmission" is the mechanism of disease. 
   The results also suggest that delivering antibodies to the brain of affected animals to bind to extracellular AS would be a way of interrupting the spreading process and theoretically halting the disease.
Science 2012;338(6109):949-953

Coffee To Improve Movement In Parkinson's Disease

Coffee ingestion has been shown to decrease risk of Parkinson's disease and now a new study from McGill University in Montreal suggests it actually improves movement of those with the disease.

Neurology August 1,2012

Parkininson's Treatment Breakthrough

Ucla--Synucleinopathies:PD,DLB,MSA
CLR01....a C-shaped complex molecular compound that wrap around the chains of lysine of alpha-Synuclein aggregates removing them. A process-specific mechanism employing transgenic zebra fish model of PD ( A tropical freshwater fish )