Parkinson’s disease tagged posts

A research team from the University of California, Irvine is the first to reveal that a molecule in the brain—ophthalmic acid—unexpectedly acts like a neurotransmitter similar to dopamine in regulating motor function, offering a new therapeutic target for Parkinson’s and other movement diseases.

In the study, published in the October issue of the journal Brain, researchers observed that ophthalmic acid binds to and activates calcium-sensing receptors in the brain, reversing the movement impairments of Parkinson’s mouse models for more than 20 hours.

The disabling neurogenerative disease affects millions of people worldwide over the age of 50...

High-intensity exercise induces brain-protective effects that have the potential to not just slow down but possibly reverse the neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s disease, a new pilot ...

A previously unidentified genetic mutation in a small protein provides significant protection against Parkinson’s disease and offers a new direction for exploring potential treatments, according to a new USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology study.

The variant, located in a mitochondrial microprotein dubbed SHLP2, was found to be highly protective against Parkinson’s disease; individuals with this mutation are half as likely to develop the disease as those who do not carry it. The variant form of the protein is relatively rare and is found primarily in people of European descent.

The findings appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

First discovered by Pinchas Cohen at the USC Leonard Davis School in 2016, SHLP2 is made within the cell’s...

New study finds dopamine neurons are more diverse than previously thought. Although there is a long-standing, common assumption that most – if not all – dopamine neurons solely respond to rewards or reward-predicting cues, researchers instead discovered that one genetic subtype fires when the body moves and does not respond to rewards at all. The discovery could help explain why loss of dopamine neurons leads to Parkinson’s disease.

In a new Northwestern University-led study, researchers identified and recorded from three genetic subtypes of dopamine neurons in the midbrain region of a mouse model.

Although there is ...