| Parkinson’s News Updates |
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| Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash |
| Poor Sleep Seems to Worsen Parkinson’s Symptoms Parkinson’s News Today Poor quality of sleep is linked to worse motor and nonmotor symptoms in people with Parkinson’s disease, a study has found. Greater deviations from an estimated ideal bedtime, time in bed, and duration of sleep are linked to more severe symptoms, data show. “Sleep disorders have a significant effect on the burden of [Parkinson’s] symptoms. The current findings provide new insights into the monitoring and management of sleep and [Parkinson’s] and need to be further explored in the future studies, ” the researchers wrote. The study, “Worse Sleep Quality Aggravates the Motor and Non-Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease,” was published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. Sleep problems, including insomnia, nightmares and restless sleep, are common nonmotor symptoms of Parkinson’s that can influence life quality significantly. It has been reported that sleep disturbances sometimes occur years before a Parkinson’s diagnosis, when the hallmark motor symptoms of the neurodegenerative disease emerge. —————- To Help Underserved Patients, APDA Offers 2 Key Resources in Chinese Parkinson’s News Today The American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) is now offering two key resources in simplified Chinese — part of the nonprofit’s ongoing efforts to reach and support more Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and caregivers, particularly in underrepresented communities. The newly transcreated free resources, written in Chinese characters, are the APDA’s Parkinson’s Disease Handbook and Medical ID Card. Both are available to download from the APDA website — which already offers many resources in Spanish — or hard copies can be physically mailed. “We are very excited to launch these two key resources in simplified Chinese as a first step in better serving the Chinese community,” Leslie A. Chambers, APDA president and CEO, said in a press release. “There are so many more people we want to help and support. We have created and translated a wealth of resources for the Spanish-speaking community and we will continue to expand those offerings. And now we are so eager to begin better serving those who speak Chinese as there is a severe lack of credible Parkinson’s disease information available to them,” Chambers said, adding, “We still have a long way to go, but we are happy to make this progress.” —————— New Method May Help Diagnose Parkinson’s Using a Blood Test Parkinson’s News Today A novel method that involves looking for disease-associated alpha-synuclein inside of neuron-derived extracellular vesicles — packets of cellular cargo that are released by nerve cells in the brain, and can be isolated in a person’s blood — may help to diagnose and monitor the progression of Parkinson’s disease. A team of scientists in Germany described their new approach in the study, “Detection of neuron-derived pathological [alpha]-synuclein in blood,” published in Brain. “The protocol described here offers the development of a biochemical blood-based test for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease,” the scientists wrote. There is no single test that can diagnose Parkinson’s disease. Currently, the disease is diagnosed based mainly on the presence of symptoms. This means most people with Parkinson’s aren’t diagnosed until the progressive disorder has already caused substantial damage. |