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).

The top 5 pieces of Parkinson’s news

Continue reading “Monthly Research Review – September 2018” →

At the end of each year, it is a useful practise to review the triumphs (and failures) of the past 12 months. It is an exercise of putting everything into perspective.

2017 has been an incredible year for Parkinson’s research.

And while I appreciate that statements like that will not bring much comfort to those living with the condition, it is still important to consider and appreciate what has been achieved over the last 12 months.

In this post, we will try to provide a summary of the Parkinson’s-related research that has taken place in 2017 (Be warned: this is a VERY long post!)

The number of research reports and clinical trial studies per year since 1817

As everyone in the Parkinson’s community is aware, in 2017 we were observing the 200th anniversary of the first description of the condition by James Parkinson (1817). But what a lot of people fail to appreciate is how little research was actually done on the condition during the first 180 years of that period.

The graphs above highlight the number of Parkinson’s-related research reports published (top graph) and the number of clinical study reports published (bottom graph) during each of the last 200 years (according to the online research search engine Pubmed – as determined by searching for the term “Parkinson’s“).

PLEASE NOTE, however, that of the approximately 97,000 “Parkinson’s“-related research reports published during the last 200 years, just under 74,000 of them have been published in the last 20 years.

That means that 3/4 of all the published research on Parkinson’s has been conducted in just the last 2 decades.

And a huge chunk of that (almost 10% – 7321 publications) has been done in 2017 only.

So what happened in 2017? Continue reading “2017 – Year in Review: A good vintage” →