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Your Parkinson's News Update for the Week of 6.22.20

Monday June 22, 2020

Scientific Reports via Medical Xpress

"Oxidative stress is the result of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, and can be damaging to cells and tissues. In a new study, researchers from Osaka University developed a novel dietary silicon (Si)-based antioxidant agent that suppressed the development and progression of kidney failure and Parkinson's in rodents."

The results provided "striking results that show that our Si-based agent is effective in preventing the progression of chronic kidney disease and Parkinson's disease in well-established animal models," says corresponding author Shoichi Shimada. "Our findings could provide new insights into the clinical management of patients with these diseases, for which currently no curative approach exists."

Preparing a Person With Parkinson's for a Hospital Stay

AARP

"Andrée Jannette, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, knows the feeling of being in a hospital and desperate to let nurses and doctors know — before anything else — that she has Parkinson's.

'Sometimes people will think that you're drunk or have had a stroke or something,' she says of the outward symptoms — such as stiffness, tremors and difficulty speaking.

That's why she wears a medical ID bracelet and keeps a Parkinson's Foundation Aware in Care hospitalization kit in her purse with extra doses of her medicines and vital information about Parkinson's."

Parkinson's Linked to Overabundance of

Opportunistic Gut Pathogens

Nature via New Atlas

The latest discovery in the area of Parkinson's and the gut comes from neurologists at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who used advanced DNA sequencing and computational tools to re-analyze data from a 2017 study, along with an entirely new independent data set. Together, the research looked at 520 cases of Parkinson’s and more than 300 controls, making up what the authors describe as the largest microbiome-wide association study of the disease to date.

The idea that the onset of Parkinson’s disease is related to the gut dates back to the early 2000s, when German scientist Heiko Braak published a string of studies proposing that pathogens in gut make their way to the brain via the nervous system. “The exciting question is whether these are Braak’s pathogens capable of triggering Parkinson's, or are they irrelevant to Parkinson's but able to penetrate the gut and grow, because the gut lining is compromised in Parkinson's,” researcher Payami said.

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