HM CINAC Comprehensive Neurosciences Centre
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Principal investigator and head of Neurophysiology and Neuromodulation at the CIEN Foundation and head of the Functional Neuroscience Group at the Integral Neurosciences Centre HM CINAC.
Professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine of the CEU San Pablo University and Director of the Centro Integral de Neurociencias HM CINAC
Neurologist specialising in Parkinson's disease at the Comprehensive Neuroscience Centre HM Cinac, editor-in-chief of MDS Podcast and coordinator of the Ad Hoc Committee on Neurotechnology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Spanish Society of Neurology.
An investigation published in JAMA Neurology concludes that obstructive sleep apnoea is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's disease, according to the medical records of more than 11 million American war veterans, mainly men. The article also indicates that this risk can be reduced by early treatment with continuous positive airway pressure, suggesting intervention in sleep-disordered breathing as a strategy for preventing neurological diseases.
A team has managed to visualise and quantify the protein aggregates believed to trigger Parkinson's disease. This is the first time they have been directly visualised. These small aggregates – alpha-synuclein oligomers – were observed in post mortem brain tissue from people with the disease using a new microscopy technique, as explained by the authors in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
A phase 2 clinical trial in France has examined whether taking an oral anti-diabetic drug called lixisenatide - a GLP1 receptor analogue, similar to those also used for weight loss - also has an effect on the progression of Parkinson's disease. The results indicate that there is a modest but significant decrease in the progression of motor symptoms of the disease, although side effects were also observed. The results are published in the journal NEJM.
Parkinson's disease is usually diagnosed when there is already extensive neuronal damage and symptoms are evident. Now, researchers at Cardiff University in the UK have used movement and sleep quality data from wearable accelerometers and concluded that they can help identify the disease early, years before clinical diagnosis. Although there is no effective preventive treatment, the authors propose that the tool can determine people at risk of developing Parkinson's disease and identify participants for clinical trials of neuroprotective treatments. The results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.