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What do current treatments consist of?

Levodopa is the most commonly prescribed drug for Parkinson's. It is absorbed in the intestine and the brain converts it to dopamine, which is the brain chemical that powers normal movement but decreases in Parkinson's disease (PD).

maybe it's just me, but that does sound like a major break thru?

Let’s wait until the results have been replicated. Parkinson’s research got majorly burned by that somewhat recently.

edit: got it wrong

Is that amyloid plaques?

Parkinson's too? I thought it was Alzheimer's.

alpha-synuclein is believes to be part of the mechanism of pathology in PD. Beta-amyloid plaques is associated with Alzheimer's, but so is tau.

Knowing the different ways neurons die and preventing their deaths are giant leaps.

There are none.

Levodopa and the rest are just treating the symptoms. There's nothing to stop progress or even reverse it.

Big Pharma always recommends medicalization over lifestyle changes: their priority is profits

EDIT: i'm not denying the need for medication, in many cases it's the best way to treat symptoms.

I'm just cynical about medicalization in general.

These aren’t plaques in the figure, it’s an experiment to show autophagy induction. The structure in panel G’’ in the figure that also appears as a red dot in the colour images, is associated with autophagy, a process of removing and recycling cell waste. The red shows where one of the autophagy proteins is. Here, an Endophilin A1 mutant is used that doesn’t need a calcium signal to turn it on. So they’ve shown that this ‘on’ state makes autophagic structures form.

Later in the paper they show that a different mutation of Endophilin A1 associated with Parkinson’s is an ‘off’ state mutation, and inhibits autophagy. So you’d see fewer of those autophagic structures, and since autophagy helps clear the stuff that causes plaques, this PD associated mutant could lead to plaque formation.

Parkinson's is not the sort of thing that can be fixed with lifestyle changes. "Big Pharma" making Carbidopa/Levodopa is the sole reason my dad has been even remotely functional for the last 15 years.

There is truth for your statement, but the is the wrong thread. There is no lifestyle change that will fix Parkinson's. Perhaps you're a bit account, who knows

There is a number of dugs that can be used in conjunction with each other, namely Levodopa along with others like Carbidopa. Some are prescribed to increase the effectiveness of L-dopa and some are for fighting momentary flare-ups of symptoms, often called "off" times.

There is also a deep brain stimulation operation that can be an option but typically only around 10-15% patients become good candidates for it and less get the operation.

Both these avenues are only strategies to treat symptoms and do not alter the course of the disease. Patients that live long enough will eventually become dependant on the drugs to have any level of functionality at all.

True, L-DOPA only treats the symptoms. If the dopaminergic neurons are already dead at the later stages of the disease, the only way to treat the disease instead of the symptoms would be by dopaminergic neuron transplantation. That stuff its still quite far. At the earlier stages some drugs that can modify the proteostasis in the cells could be usefull, but they are still in development, and even in optimistic scenarios it would take half a decade for them to be available as a treatment.

Actually DBS is close to being a standard of care, esp in younger people.

Excess S-Nitrosylation blocks it's function in most cases. Mutation would be a rare exception.

It's why Nitrogen pollution is linked to Parkinsons, and why things like Poppers are potentially quite dangerous.

Excess S-Nitrosylation blocks it's function in most cases. Mutation would be a rare exception.

We've know this for a while, but they have just shown an extra mechanism by which it happens.

It's why nitrogen pollution from exhaust fumes is linked to parkinsons.

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Sleep, diet and exercise.

Linking into this study, when you sleep you brain removes waste products. Exercise increases blood flow, also removing waste products. So that might partly be the mechanism for how they help.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/parkinsons-disease/fighting-parkinson-disease-with-exercise-and-diet

Could periodic fasting (which induces autophagy) maybe help slow the onset of Parkinsons?

Ah crap you’re totally right, I got them mixed up. I guess I’ll blame it on Alzheimer’s, if only fake research had cured it by now.

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My dad and grandfather both had Parkinson's. The medicine came a long way between them. We were happy pharmaceutical companies took the medicines to the next level.

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You do know what Parkinsons is right? Do you think Michael J Fox could just change his lifestyle, and things would get better for him?

Man, this sleep/diet/exercise stuff seems super important for… literally everything

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Has anyone tried pemf treatments?

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The earth's atmosphere is 80% nitrogen. What does it matter if it's in exhaust? Bonded with something to make some toxic molecule?

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Atmospheric nitrogen just nitrogen, N2, which is relatively inert.

Nitrogen in exhaust are nitrogen oxides, namely NO and NO2, which are quite toxic.

It's research seeking to confirm a hypothesis. It needs to be replicated in mammalian cell line and then in an animal model. Drug development and clinical trials therafter. Bench to bedside in 15-20 years. Hard to say if is a breakthrough before that...ask the Alzheimers researchers.

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