'Mother cells' which produce the neurons affected by Parkinson's disease have been identified by scientists, according to new research published in the journal Glia.

A team including MIT researchers has demonstrated for the first time that artificially created stem cells can be used to provide treatment for symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats.

‘Mother cells’ which produce the neurons affected by Parkinson’s disease have been identified by scientists, according to new research published in the journal Glia.

Neurons grafted into the brain of a patient with Parkinson’s disease fourteen years ago have developed Lewy body pathology, the defining pathology for the disease, according to research by Jeffrey H. Kordower, PhD, and associates and published in the April 6 issue of Nature Medicine.

A new blood test that can give an early diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease and distinguish between Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease could be launched this summer, reports Marina Murphy in SCI’s Chemistry & Industry magazine.

For the first time, the association between Parkinson’s disease and exposure to pesticides has been shown in patients with the neurological disorder compared with their unaffected relatives, according to a study in the online open access journal BMC Neurology.

There is new promise on the horizon for those who suffer from REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD) according to researchers at the University of Toronto.

Research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has shown that therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), can be used to treat Parkinson’s disease in mice. The study’s results are published in the March 23 online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

Researchers at Rhode Island Hospital and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University have discovered a gene that could hold the key to developing new treatments for Parkinson’s disease – a progressive and often debilitating movement disorder that affects as many as one million Americans.

Better understanding of Parkinson’s disease onset during aging is important for improving diagnostics and developing strategies for therapeutic intervention. Scientists from the University Medical Center in Groningen have now identified genes and processes that may underlie what makes some people more susceptible to this disease.

One aquarium fish’s uncanny ability to regenerate essentially any cell type has given scientists a way to mimic cell loss that occurs in diseases such as Parkinson’s and diabetes then watch how the fish make more of them.