Tag: Parkinsons

Monthly Research Review – March 2024

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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 March 2024.

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

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So, what happened during March 2024?

In world news:

March 4th – Astronomers report that the surface of Europa, a moon of the planet Jupiter, may have much less oxygen than previously inferred, suggesting that the moon has a less hospitable environment for the existence of lifeforms than may have been considered earlier.

 

March 6th – The first creation of induced pluripotent stem cells for the Asian elephant is reported by Colossal Biosciences, a key step towards de-extinction of the woolly mammoth.

 

March 7th – As the final Nordic country to join the alliance, Sweden officially joins NATO, becoming its 32nd member after Finland a year earlier.

March 13th – The Artificial Intelligence Act, the world’s first comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for artificial intelligence, is passed by the European Union.

 

March 14th – SpaceX successfully launched their Starship spacecraft, but lost the rocket upon re-entering the atmosphere.

 

March 25th – The UN Security Council passed Resolution 2728  calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza during Ramadan and demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages (14 votes in favour with the United States abstaining).

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

In March 2024, there were 1,002 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (3,028 for all of 2024 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 – March 2024” →

The Science of Sci-comms

~ Simon ~ 3 Comments

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During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, I was asked to speak to a group of medical students at the University of Cambridge about the communication of science. I was a little bemused by the invitation. Big university and little old me maintaining a small website (read: collection of typos and poor gramma). I did not feel like any kind of authority on the topic of science communication.

Feeling ridiculously unprepared for such a task, I naturally accepted the invitation and I decided to do a deep dive into the topic – delving into the history and the various formats. The content of my presentation probably put my young audience to sleep, but I found it interesting.

And at the risk of putting you to sleep, I thought I would post some of the contents here. 

In today’s post, we will discuss Sci-comms.

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Tom Hardy. Source: Theresident

After receiving a honorary fellowship at the University of the Arts London, actor Tom Hardy addressed the graduating class of 2015. In his speech, he said “My father told me that my job is to observe and reflect. And anything that gets in the way of the telescope has to go including the self” (Source).

And evidently Tom has taken his novelist father (Chips Hardy)’s words to heart as he has “II O&R” (“To Observe and Reflect”) tattooed on his right shoulder and claims this is his motto for life:

Source: Bodyartguru

Now, I’m not comparing myself to Tom (we can’t all be as good looking as me), but I really like his philosophy. And I used this to start my presentation on science communication (“Sci-comms”) to a group of undergraduate medical students at the University of Cambridge during the COVID pandemic.

My approach to Sci-comms is to observe and reflect.

Continue reading “The Science of Sci-comms” →

Monthly Research Review – February 2024

~ 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 February 2024.

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

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So, what happened during February 2024?

In world news:

1st February – A group of patients with hereditary angioedema (a genetic disorder characterised by severe, painful and unpredictable swelling attacks) have had their lives transformed by a single treatment of NTLA-2002 – a breakthrough gene-editing therapy (CRISPR-Cas9 editing of the KLKB1 gene) being developed by Intellia Therapeutics (Click here to read more about this).

 

7th February – A calcium-based battery – able to charge and discharge fully 700 times at room temperature – was presented by Chinese scientists. It is described as a potential alternative to lithium, being 2,500 times more abundant on Earth (Click here to read more about this).

 

8th February – Google renames AI chatbot Bard to Gemini, and makes it available on mobile.

 

23rd February – Three new moons within the Solar System were discovered, one around Uranus and two around Neptune, bringing their total known satellites to 28 and 16, respectively.

 

28th February – A study in the British Medical Journal links ultra-processed foods to 32 negative health impacts, including a higher risk of heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, adverse mental health, and early death (no mention of Parkinson’s – 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 February 2024, there were 1,024research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (2,026 for all of 2024 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 7 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – February 2024” →

The NIC-PD trial results

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Numerous epidemiological studies have indicated that smoking might have a protective effect against developing Parkinson’s. As a result, researchers have long explored the neuroprotective potential of various ingredients in cigarettes.

One of the active chemicals in smoking is nicotine, and preclinical research has reported that this stimulant has neuroprotective properties. Unfortunately, the results of a large clinical trial assessing nicotine treatment in people with Parkinson’s (called the NIC-PD trial) has not been able to demonstrate any protection.

If anything, the results suggest that nicotine treatment made Parkinson’s worse.

In today’s post, we will look at the epidemiological and preclinical data leading up to the NIC-PD study, we’ll review the results of the trial, and discuss what all of this means for Parkinson’s. 

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Tavia Gordon. Source: Projecteuclid

In 1950, Dr Tavia Gordon noticed something interesting.

He observed that while the overall mortality rates for Japanese men in the USA and Japan were very similar, the incidence of heart disease was significantly lower in Japan. When he looked at Japanese men in Hawaii, he noticed that they were halfway between the other two cohorts.

He described his findings in this report:

Title: Mortality experience among the Japanese in the United States, Hawaii, and Japan.
Author: Gordon T.
Journal: Public Health Rep (1896). 1957 Jun;72(6):543-53.
PMID: 13432134              (This report is OPEN ACCESS if you would like to read it)

Importantly, his observations led to the setting up of a major longitudinal study which became known as the Honolulu Heart Study.

Interesting, but what does this have to do with Parkinson’s?

Continue reading “The NIC-PD trial results” →

Year in review: 2023

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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.

2023 has been an extremely busy year for Parkinson’s research, with a lot of clinical trial results and new insights. 

In today’s post, we will consider three big Parkinson’s-related research takeaways of 2023 (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 will be a rather long post).

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Source: Reddit

2023 was a year that reminded me of Ken Burn’s quote:

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but human nature remains the same.” 

Sam Clemens wrote something similar about history rhyming, but Burns is more on the mark. For the first time in three years, it felt like the heavy weight of the COVID-19 pandemic was lifted off us in 2023 and life could get back to normal.

But what is normal?

Mainstream media bombarded us with news of the ongoing war in Ukraine and then a fresh outbreak of violence in the middle east which threatens to spill over into much wider conflict. If all we did all day was keep track of these sorts of events, we would build up a pretty bleak picture of human nature.

Ukraine or Gaza? Source: Wikipedia

But there are other aspects to human nature that are more inspiring and can give us hope. Key among them is a desire to discover new things and perform amazing feats of scientific/engineering achievement. In 2023, these included:

  • Landing a space craft on the southern pole of the moon, releasing a rover, and finding the remnants of an ocean of magma that helped form the surface of the moon (Click here to read more about this).
  • Getting the first CRISPR-based treatment for sickle cell disease approved for clinical use (Click here to read more about this).
  • Inventing floating ‘artificial leaves’ that can generate clean fuels from sunlight and water (Click here to read more about this).
  • Growing rice in soil that had been collected on Mars and returned to Earth (Click here to read more about this).
  • Launching a 400 foot (121 meter) high & 30 foot (9 meter) wide SpaceX Starship into space (Click here to read more about this).
  • Developing an AI that found drugs that can combat drug-resistant infections (Click here to read more about this).
  • Engineering a new non-invasive brain-reading method that is able to translate a person’s neural activity into a continuous stream of text (Click here to read more about this).
  • Conducting the first evolution experiment of synthetic ‘minimal cells’ – JCVI-syn3B bacterial cells, whose genomes were trimmed to just 493 essential genes and are the smallest of any known free-living organism – and discovering that life finds a way (Click here to read more about this).
  • Successfully returning samples collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid 101955 Bennu, back to Earth. Understand that OSIRIS-REx successfully touched down on Bennu at a distance of 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) from Earth, and Bennu was travelling at 63,000 miles per hour (101,000 kilometers per hour!!!) as it orbited the sun (Click here to read more about this).

There are many more examples of these kinds of achievements that made 2023 an amazing year, and give me hope about human nature. And here I think of another Ken Burns quote:

“I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we’re lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it’s worse than fear – it’s active disengagement”

As we look to 2024, let us all be actively engaged.

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.

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The 3 main SOPD highlights in Parkinson’s-related research for 2023

(in no particular order – just our opinion)

Continue reading “Year in review: 2023” →

Monthly Research Review-December 2023

~ 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 December 2023.

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

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So, what happened during December 2023?

In world news:

December 4th – Tech giant IBM revealed two quantum computers: One (dubbed ‘Condor’) is the second largest ever made  and the other (called ‘Heron’) produces fewer errors than any quantum computer the company has built so far (Click here to read more about this).

 

December 7th – Quantum entanglement of molecules was achieved for the first time, by researchers at Princeton University (Click here to read more about this).

 

December 12th – At the COP28 (“FLOP28”) climate summit in Dubai, a “consensus” was reached for countries to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the first such agreement in the conference’s 30-year history (?!?!). Great, but the transition is specifically for energy systems (meaning it completely excludes plastics, transport or agriculture). And these are the people who are going to save us…

 

December 13th – Scientists report that the contents of the sample-return mission of the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu revealed organic molecules as well as unknown materials which require more study to have a better idea of their composition and makeup.

 

December 31 – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark announced her abdication (effective January 14, 2024) after 52 years on the throne:

 

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

In December 2023, there were 1,134 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (11,416 for all of 2023 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-December 2023” →

Monthly Research Review – November 2023

~ 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 2023.

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

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So, what happened during November 2023?

In world news:

November 1st – The Beatles (I kid you not) released “Now and Then“, the band’s last ever song, featuring restored vocals by John Lennon (1940–1980), as well as guitar tracks by George Harrison (1943–2001).

 

November 2nd – Zoliflodacin, a first-in-class antibiotic being developed for treating drug-resistant ‘super-gonorrhoea’ presented positive results in Phase 3 clinical testing. The development of this agent has been led by the non-profit organization GARDP, and if approved, zoliflodacin will be the first new antibiotic for treating gonorrhoea in decades (Click here to read more about this).

 

November 12th – Researchers at Cambridge University present a new floating artificial leaf which can turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into synthetic fuel (Click here to read more about this).

 

November 16th – Casgevy, a world-first gene therapy that aims to cure sickle-cell disease and transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia, is approved by the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, becoming the first drug using CRISPR to be licensed (Click here to read more about this).

 

November 28th – the passing of Charlie Munger was a sad moment for the author of this blog. A copy of “Poor Charlie’s Almanack” sits beside my bed. If you have never heard of Charlie, take a moment & listen to his “Psychology of Human Misjudgment” – wisdom, humor and not a word wasted:

(You should also listen to him roasting people for 5 minutes straight)

November 30th – Researchers reported that breeding chinstrap penguins nod off more than 10,000 times per day, engaging in tiny bouts of slow-wave sleep (lasting on average only 4 seconds, but resulting in the accumulation of >11 hours of sleep)

 

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

In November 2023, there were 1,271 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (10,282 for all of 2023 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 2023” →

Cure Parkinson’s Autumn Research Update meeting – 2023

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Cure Parkinson’s is a medical research charity that is focused on disease modification for Parkinson’s. Our only goal is to slow, stop or reverse the condition. To achieve this aim, we fund and support preclinical projects (that are with 5 years of clinical testing) and clinical trials focused on testing new disease modifying therapies.

Twice a year we hold public events, where we share how the research we support is developing and progressing. It is an in-person event held in London, and we stream it live to the virtual audience who are unable to attend.

In today’s post, we will review the highlights of Cure Parkinson’s 2023 Autumn Research Update meeting.

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As long time readers will be aware, the freakishly tall, ridiculously good looking author of this blog is an employee of the medical research charity, Cure Parkinson’s.

He tries to be transparent about this and where Cure Parkinson’s is involved in the research being discussed on the SoPD website, he always indicates their involvement. He doesn’t want to be seen to be biasing the content here on the SoPD towards the charity’s activities, rather he prefers to take a broader view of all the interesting research that is going on in the Parkinson’s research world.

But, when there is Cure Parkinson’s related material that he thinks might be of interest to the wider Parkinson’s community, he is comfortable with highlighting it.

And today’s post is an example of this.

Recently, Cure Parkinson’s held their 2023 Autumn Research Update meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine in London:

The RSM. Source: RSM

Continue reading “Cure Parkinson’s Autumn Research Update meeting – 2023” →

Monthly Research Review – September 2023

~ 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 2023.

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

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So, what happened during September 2023?

In world news:

September 8th – The Rugby World cup started!

September 10th – Storm Daniel, a Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone kills at least 5,000 people, with a further 10,000 to 100,000 reported missing. In the city of Derna in Libya, two dams collapse, resulting in a quarter of the city being destroyed.

 

September 14th – NASA’s independent study team investigating the nature and origins of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP, or UFOs in the old parlance) released their long-awaited report. The committee shared their preliminary observations in May, finding that existing data and eyewitness reports are insufficient to draw firm conclusions (Click here to read more about this)

 

September 14th – the 33rd Ig Nobel Prizes were handed out – the team that won the medicine prize used cadavers to assess if there was an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s nostrils:

September 29th – NASA reports that their rover “Perseverance” captured images of a 60 meter-wide dust-filled Martian whirlwind on the 30th August (Click here to read more about this and see the video footage)

 

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

In September 2023, there were 880 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (8,259 for all of 2023 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 2023” →

DOPA de-car-box-yl-ase

~ Simon ~ 6 Comments

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Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative condition that is diagnosed and monitored based on clinical observations and scoring systems – both of which are not perfect and subjective.

Biomarkers (a biological molecule found in bodily fluids or tissues that is an indicator of a normal or abnormal processes) represent an important development for medicine as they provide assurance and quantitative measures of disease, aiding the diagnostic and treatment process.

Recently there has been a lot of new research highlighting possible biomarkers for Parkinson’s, including proteins associated with the synthesis of dopamine (a chemical which is severely reduced in the brains of people with Parkinson’s).

In today’s post, we will discuss what a biomarker is and review some new research on a potential biomarker for ‘Lewy body disease’.

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The search for biomarkers. Source: NIH

2023 is quickly becoming the year of potential biomarkers for Parkinson’s. There has been a lot of new research in this space.

For example, earlier this year, the Michael J Fox Foundation and collaborators reported new data regarding the alpha synuclein seeding assay (Click here to read a previous SoPD post on this topic).

Tests that can clearly define and track medical conditions over time are critical to developing better treatments and would certainly be invaluable in Parkinson’s research.

And this week we saw researchers publish further data, highlighting another potential biomarker.

What did they report?

Continue reading “DOPA de-car-box-yl-ase” →