Monthly Research Review – January 2026

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At the end of each month, the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major or interesting pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during January 2026.

The post is divided into 10 parts based on the type of research:

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So, what happened during January 2026?

In world news:

January 6th – While the world events provided many distractions, the US national debt quietly reached $38.5 trillion (up from $36.1 trillion in January 2025 – that’s $69,400 per second for the past 12 months) and $600 billion has already been borrowed in the 2026 financial year, which starts in October (Source and click here to read how this might be a problem in 2026 as the Government competes with corporate debt issuance).

 

January 14th – Scientists led by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported the first direct experimental observation of the Migdal effect, a quantum process in which a recoiling atomic nucleus ejects an electron, confirming a prediction made in 1939 and enabling new approaches to searches for light dark matter (Click here and here to read more about this).

 

January 16th – “The most rigorous analysis of the evidence to date”: An appraisal of 43 studies in a systematic review and 17 studies in the meta-analysis, involving hundreds of thousands of pregnancies, found maternal use of paracetamol during pregnancy does not seem to increase the likelihood of autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, or intellectual disability (Click here and here to read more about this).

 

January 22nd – The USA officially withdrew from the World Health Organization (WHO) exactly one year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office directing the withdrawal (leaving unpaid fees of $260 million – click here to read more about this).

 

23rd January – In the daily effort to “flood the zone” and distract from other matters (such as the TACO move on “Iceland”), President Trump horrified veterans and allies around the world in an interview by saying that “We’ve never needed them … They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines” (Click here to read more about this, and remember: ‘If you haven’t served, respect those who have’)

 

In the world of Parkinson s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:

In January 2026, there were 1,520 (!!!) research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word Parkinson s attached. In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson s research activity (clinical trials, etc).

The top 6 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – January 2026” →

Research to get excited about?

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Analysing medical data at the national level can provide a means of screening for drugs that can have an impact on the progression of chronic diseases. The large datasets of millions of people offer the opportunity to see trends for particular drugs that could potentially point towards new avenues of research.

Recently researchers in Norway have conducted such a study, looking at drugs that are associated with reduced mortality in Parkinson’s. Their results identify some agents that have already been identified by previous research.

But one of the drugs they found is is getting folks excited… literally.

In today’s post, we will review the research and consider how strong some of these associations are.

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Source: Unsplash

“It was a daisy in a glass of water”

This is how red-headed, fair skinned Paul Karason described the moment that his path was determined. He had been reading a new age magazine in the 1990s about the health and rejuvenating properties of colloidal silver. And “the story was that the daisy had been desiccated before it was put back in the water. And [now] it looked like a fresh-picked daisy” (Source).

Paul sent away for a sample of colloidal silver and started consuming it.

A lot of it.

At one point he was drinking at least 10 ounces (300ml) a day. And within a month he noticed changes. “The acid reflux problem I’d been having just went away completely,” he said. “I had arthritis in my shoulders so bad I couldn’t pull a T-shirt off. And the next thing I knew, it was just gone”

But it wasn’t till a friend visited him, that he noticed another really big change.

What was the change?

Continue reading “Research to get excited about?” →

Born in exploding stars

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Lithium – one of only three metals that can float on water – is widely used for in the treatment of as a mood stabilizer, primarily in the management of bipolar disorder, mania, and certain types of depression.

New research suggests that lithium may be a key piece of the puzzle that is Alzheimer’s.

Other researchers are asking if it could also be important in Parkinson’s.

In today’s post, we will look at what lithium is, review the new Alzheimer’s research, and consider if it has a possible place in Parkinson’s. 

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A nova. Source: phys.org

While the “big bang” may have created a small amounts of the stuff during the initial formation of the universe, astrophysicist now believe that the majority of our current stock of lithium has been manufactured in the nuclear reactions that have powered nova explosions in the intervening period.

I’m sorry: What?!?

Lithium.

Soft, silvery-white alkali metal.

Crucial for high-energy batteries.

Yeah, that part I am aware of. But what the heck are nova explosions?

A nova explosion is a transient event in the night sky caused the sudden appearance of a bright, apparently “new” star that slowly fades over weeks or months. It is caused by a binary star system in which the pair are too close and long-story-short: Big bright flash of light!

And that is where our lithium is made?

A lot of it, yep.

Lithium is amazing stuff. It has some amazing properties. And recently researchers have reported something interesting about it in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.

What did they find?

Continue reading “Born in exploding stars” →

Reality is always so obstructive

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Obstructive sleep apnea is a common condition that involves periods of pausing in breathing while one is asleep. 

Recent research indicates that people diagnosed with this condition may be at higher risk of developing Parkinson’s.

Curiously, the same research found that early treatment of the condition reduced the risk of going on to develop Parkinson’s.

In today’s post, we will discuss what obstructive sleep apnea is, what the new research found, and how this relates to other neurodegenerative conditions.

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Source: ifis

In 2024, there were 12,132 research reports published on Parkinson’s (based on a Pubmed search for the keyword “Parkinson’s”).

That is approximately 33 papers per day.

I think we can agree that that is a lot.

Now, within all of those papers, there are topics that get more attention than others. For example, if you search for the key words “Parkinson’s” and “alpha synuclein” (a hot topic in Parkinson’s) in the scientific search engine ‘Pubmed‘, you will find that there were a total of 13,310 papers from 1997 till 2024. In 2024 alone, there were 1,477 papers published  (that’s 4 papers every day!).

Then there are topics that don’t get much attention.

Like “Parkinson’s” and “sleep apnea”.

There were only 32 papers papers published in 2024 (less than three per month).

Ok. But what is sleep apnea?

Continue reading “Reality is always so obstructive” →

Free audiobook – “Shake well before use”

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To mark 20 years of activities, Cure Parkinson’s has released a FREE audiobook that was written by one of our co-founders, Tom Isaacs. It tells the story of Tom’s diagnosis and of his adventures while he walked 4,500 mile around the coast of Britain.

It is an absolutely brilliant story and highly recommended to all. And it is FREE!

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Source:Youtube

This is Tom.

In 1996 – at just 27-years of age – he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. After dealing with the initial shock of it all, Tom embraced his situation and became a committed, (utterly) relentless activist.

Continue reading “Free audiobook – “Shake well before use”” →

2025 – Year in Review

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At the end of each year, it is a useful process to take stock and review what we have learnt over the last 12 months.

2025 has been a very busy year for Parkinson’s research, with a lot of clinical trial results being reported and new insights being made.

In today’s post, we will consider three big Parkinson’s-related research takeaways of 2025 (based on our humble opinions here at the SoPD), and then we will provide an extended overview of some of the important pieces of news from the last 12 months (Be warned: this is a rather long post).

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Source: NYTimes

This is little unit is KJ Muldoon.

Research-wise, 2025 was a pretty big year for him (in fact, he was one of Nature’s 10 people who shaped science in 2025).

Born on the 1st August, 2024, in Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, KJ was the fourth child of Kyle and Nicole Muldoon. The day after he was born it was noted that he was unusually sleepy and averse to feeding. Blood work quickly showed that he was accumulating ammonia in his blood, and a genetic test revealed that he had a mutation that caused carbamoyl phosphate synthetase I (CPS1) deficiency.

KJ was too young for a liver transplant which was the only major treatment available at the time, so his treatment options were looking extremely limited.

What happened next was part of what made 2025 an amazing year:

The kid doesn’t know it yet, but he made medical history as the first human to receive a personalized CRISPR-based gene therapy treatment (Click here to read the research report behind this story). And here is a timeline of events in his treatment story:

Source: NEJM 

And very recently, KJ took his first steps (Click here to see this).

Forget about all of the idiotic nonsense flooding social media and all of the witless utterances coming from our so called “leaders” and all of the talking heads on normal media.

Stories like KJ’s are made 2025 an incredible year. Part of humanity truly striving for a better future.

And this was only one story among a huge bag of uncelebrated scientific advances that occurred this year. Advances such as:

  • A team of researchers at Roche and Boston’s Children’s Hospital set a new record for the fastest human genome sequencing and analysis. It took them just under 4 hours to sequence the whole genome – in the 2010s it took 3 days (Click here to read more about this).
  • The second chikungunya vaccine (‘Vimkunya’) was approved. Chikungunya is a disease spread by mosquitoes (similar to dengue), which can cause months of joint pain and in some rare cases, paralysis. Vaccines do work (Click here to read more about this).
  • The seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy (Click here to read more about this).
  • The FDA gave a green-light to the first multi-person clinical trials of pig kidney transplants, which will hopefully help ease the global shortage of donor organs (Click here to read more about this).
  • The Vera C. Rubin Observatory came online.
  • The FDA has approved 44 brand new drugs – more than twice as many as were approved in 2010.
  • Lenacapavir is a long-acting antiviral injection for HIV received approval in the US for HIV prevention (Click here to read more about this).
  • The UK became the first country to offer a vaccine against gonorrhea (Click here to read more about this).
  • Researcher combined AI models RFDiffusion and AlphaFold2 to create a ‘multi-step enzyme’ for the first time, and that enzyme has never been seen before in nature (Click here to read more about this and click here to read an exemplar).
  • In October, tech company Google announced that its “quantum echoes” algorithm proved 13,000 times faster than a classical computer at predicting molecular structures (Click here to read more about this).
  • Mitochondria were discovered to be critical for memory formation in immune T cells and have an unexpected role in tissue healing (Click here and here to read more about this, respectively).

Below is a list of some of the more interesting Parkinson’s research findings of the year – by month, but starting with the top three according to the team here at SoPD HQ.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The author of this blog is the director of research at the medical research charity Cure Parkinson’s. For the purpose of transparency and to eliminate any sense of bias, where Cure Parkinson’s is a funder of the research it shall be noted. The selection of research topics below are based on his opinion alone and do not reflect the thoughts of any other parties.

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The 3 main SOPD highlights in Parkinson’s-related research for 2025
(in no particular order – just our opinion)

Continue reading “2025 – Year in Review” →

Monthly Research Review – December 2025

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At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during December 2025.

The post is divided into 10 parts based on the type of research:

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So, what happened during December 2025?

In world news:

December 2nd – The first complete synthesis of verticillin A is reported by chemists at MIT. The fungal compound, discovered more than 50 years ago, has long been viewed as a promising anticancer agent – particularly for treating aggressive brain tumours (Click here to read more about this).

 

December 5th – President Trump was awarded the “inaugural FIFA Peace Prize”.

 

December 8th – Researchers at Great Ormond Street Hospital and King’s College Hospital in London reported on the treatment of nine children and two adults with T-cell leukaemia using a gene therapy technique, which scientists said triggered a “deep remission” for this previously untreatable cancer. Seven are still disease-free three years later. (Click here and here to read more about this).

 

December 10th – Australia’s world-first social media ban for children under the age of 16 came into effect (Click here to read more about this).

 

December 14th –  Ahmed al-Ahmed is the best of us.

 

In the world of Parkinson s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:

In December 2025, there were 1,631 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word Parkinson s attached (13,889 for all of 2025). In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson s research activity (clinical trials, etc).

The top 6 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – December 2025” →

Monthly Research Review – November 2025

~ Simon ~ Leave a comment

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At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during November 2025.

The post is divided into 10 parts based on the type of research:

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So, what happened during November 2025?

In world news:

November 6th – Tesla shareholders approved a $1 trillion pay package for the company’s CEO Elon Musk (Click here to read more about this idiocy).

November 10th – In a Phase 1, first-in-human trial, a CRISPR gene therapy targeting ANGPTL3 is found to be safe and able to reduce LDL cholesterol by nearly 50%, while triglycerides are reduced by 55% (Click here to read more about this).

November 13th – On this day next year, Voyager 1 will pass the small milestone of reaching one light day – the distance it takes light to travel in 24 hours – from Earth. After five decades of travel, the spacecraft is approximately 170 AU from the Earth, and it takes almost 24 hours for signals from Earth to reach it (Click here to read more about this).

November 18th – Scientists at CERN’s ALPHA experiment report an eightfold increase in the rate of production of antimatter, achieved by using laser-cooled beryllium ions to sympathetically cool positrons to −266 °C. This technique allows over 15,000 antihydrogen atoms to be created in under seven hours (Click here to read more about this).

November 22nd – When the Scottish midfielder Kenny McLean scored from the halfway line to seal a breathtaking 4-2 win against Denmark – sealing their place in the 2026 Football World Cup (the first time since 1998) – the reaction at Hampden Park according to the British Geological Survey was equivalent to a very small earthquake:

In the world of Parkinson’s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:

In November 2025, there were 1,189 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (12,258 for all of 2025 so far). In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson’s research activity (clinical trials, etc).

The top 5 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – November 2025” →

Monthly Research Review-October 2025

~ Simon ~ Leave a comment

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At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during October 2025.

The post is divided into 10 parts based on the type of research:

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So, what happened during October 2025?

In world news:

October 1st – Scientists report the detection of organic molecules on Enceladus, based on plume samples taken by the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on the Cassini spacecraft (Click here to read more about this).

 

October 10th – Crypto enthusiasts were left puzzled as to how just 30 minutes before President Trump’s surprise announcement of 100% China tariffs, an individual (@​bigwinner01) opened a massive, multi-million dollar leveraged short position on Bitcoin, and made $88 million in just two hours… and then closed the position (Click here to read more about this).

 

October 20th – Japan finally joined the list of countries to have female leaders – Sanae Takaichi made history as Japan’s first female prime minister. There are 73 women in Japan’s Lower House, representing just 15.7% of the 465-seat chamber (Click here to read more about this).

 

October 27th – “At the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out three lethal kinetic strikes on four vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations (DTO) trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific” (Click here to read more about this).

 

October 28th – OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 with a mission to safely build “artificial general intelligence” for humanity’s benefit. Now, it’s not so ‘open’. OpenAI has now “converted its main business into a for-profit corporation, the conclusion of a lengthy and fraught legal saga” (Click here to read more about this – Sam Altman scares me…)

 

In the world of Parkinson’s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:

In October 2025, there were 1,257 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (11,069 for all of 2025 so far). In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson’s research activity (clinical trials, etc).

The top 5 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review-October 2025” →

Monthly Research Review – September 2025

~ Simon ~ Leave a comment

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At the end of each month the SoPD writes a post which provides an overview of some of the major pieces of Parkinson’s-related research that were made available during September 2025.

The post is divided into 10 parts based on the type of research:

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So, what happened during September 2025?

In world news:

September 5th – Chemists at the University of Copenhagen made a new material called BAETA from old plastic bottles. It can catch CO2 from the air. Making BAETA does not need much energy and it can be made a scale (Click here and here to read more about this).

 

September 8th – Elusive street artist Banksy unveiled a mural on London’s Royal Courts of Justice, depicting a judge attacking a pro-Palestine protester with a gavel. The artwork was quickly covered up by large sheets of plastic and metal barriers, and court officials said the work would be removed (Click here to read more about this).

 

September 9th – Protesters set fire to Nepal’s parliament building in Kathmandu as “Generation Z” protests against Government corruption and social media bans escalated (Click here to read more about this).

 

September 9th – University of Florida researchers develop a chip that replaces electricity with light for key AI tasks. Using microscopic lenses etched onto silicon, it performs laser-powered computations with drastically lower energy and near-perfect accuracy (Click here and here to read more about this).

 

September 17th – NASA announces the 6,000th confirmed exoplanet (Click here to read more about this).

 

In the world of Parkinson’s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:

In September 2025, there were 1,101 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (9,812 for all of 2025 so far). In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson’s research activity (clinical trials, etc).

The top 5 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – September 2025” →