Parkinson’s disease tagged posts

The fMRI activity of a person with Parkinson’s disease is shown at baseline and one year later. The areas of high activity (orange) become areas of low activity (blue) in the second scan, showing progressive deterioration. Credit: Courtesy of David Vaillancourt

A new, non-invasive way to track the progression of Parkinson’s disease could help evaluate experimental treatments to slow or stop the disease’s progression. University of Florida researchers used fMRI to reveal areas where Parkinson’s disease and related conditions cause progressive decline in brain activity. While current treatments focus on controlling symptoms, biomarkers provide a quantifiable way to measure how medications address not just symptoms, but the neurological changes behind them.

Previous studies have used imagin...

Primary hippocampal neurons from mice express G2019S-LRRK2. The neurons were treated with alpha-synuclein fibrils, and 18 days later immunofluorescence was performed. The magenta shows phospho-alpha-synuclein inclusions in the cell bodies and throughout the axons, which are visualized as green. Credit: UAB

A team has shown the most common genetic cause of Parkinson’s disease – a mutant LRRK2 kinase enzyme – contributes to the formation of inclusions in neurons, resembling one of the hallmark pathologies seen in Parkinson’s disease. These inclusions are made up of aggregated alpha synuclein protein, which – the research also shows – can be prevented from forming by using 2 LRRK2 kinase inhibitor drugs now being developed for clinical use.

The interaction between mutant LRRK2 kinase and alph...

Clumps of the protein a-synuclein in a Parkinsonian brain. Credit: Donghoon Kim/Johns Hopkins Medicine

Researchers at Johns Hopkins say they have gleaned 2 important new clues in the fight against Parkinson’s disease: that blocking an enzyme called c-Abl prevents the disease in specially bred mice, and that a chemical tag on a second protein may signal the disorder’s presence and progression. Their work, suggests a promising target for drug research and a tool that could speed Parkinson’s disease research more broadly.

“There were indications that c-Abl activity leads to Parkinson’s disease, and our experiments show there is indeed a connection,” says Prof. Ted Dawson, M.D., Ph.D...

These are brain scans of a representative patient showing Dopamine transporter binding (red) before and after 3-month NAC treatment. Credit: Thomas Jefferson University

n-acetylcysteine (NAC), with strong antioxidant effects, shows potential benefit as part of the management for patients with Parkinson’s disease. Combining clinical evaluations of a patient’s mental and physical abilities with brain imaging studies that tracked the levels of dopamine, the lack of which is thought to cause Parkinson’s, doctors from the Depts of Integrative Medicine, Neurology, and Radiology, at Thomas Jefferson University showed that patients receiving NAC improved on both measures.

Current treatments for Parkinson’s disease are generally limited to temporarily replacing dopamine in the brain as well as some...