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 2018. The post is divided into five parts based on the type of research (Basic biology, disease mechanism, clinical research, other news, and Review articles/videos). |
So, what happened during September 2018?
In world news:
September 2nd – A fire destroyed the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro – a “catastrophic loss of artifacts”.
Source: HuffPost
September 14th – Hurricane Florence made landfall in Wrightsville Beach (North Carolina), caused extensive damage and flooding throughout in the Carolinas.
Source: WPLG
September 17th – In an effort to study the hidden physical properties of electrons, Japanese researchers built the ‘most powerful magnet on Earth’ – a 1200 Tesla, 3.2 megajoules beast. The experiment was supposed to go off with a bang, but the ‘bang’ was slightly more than expected: it blew the door off the protective chamber holding the experiment!
September 21st – after a three year journey, the first rover of the Japanese Hayabusa2 spacecraft touched down on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu. A truly remarkable achievement.
Source: NYTimes (some amazing images on this link)
September 24th – Two reports were published – one in the journal Nature Medicine and another in the journal New England Journal of Medicine – describing the case of 29-year-old Jered Chinnock (who 5 years ago could not feel or move his body from the chest down) recovering the ability of assisted walking following spinal cord stimulation and intensive physical therapy.
September 28th – A magnitude 7.5 earthquake hit the island of Sulawesi (Indonesia), causing a tsunami and terrible destruction and loss of life.
Source: Australian
In the world of Parkinson’s research, a great deal of new research and news was reported:
In September 2018, there were 841 research articles added to the Pubmed website with the tag word “Parkinson’s” attached (5978 for all of 2018 so far). In addition, there was a wave to news reports regarding various other bits of Parkinson’s research activity (clinical trials, etc).