Now there is an experimental "app" for diagnosing the neurological condition that affects about 127,000 people in the UK. The system involves sensing almost imperceptible effects on the voice, walking behaviour and manual dexterity that may provide an early indication of Parkinson's. Scientists are testing the app in a large group of 2,500 people with diagnosed Parkinson's, symptoms or genes known to be linked to the disease, and healthy individuals. An earlier analysis of thousands of voice recordings suggested that effects such as increased breathiness, drifting pitch, and altered vowel sounds can detect Parkinson's with 99% accuracy. Similarly, checking a person's gait with a smartphone's accelerometer - the in-built motion sensor that tells the device what way up it is - identified people with Parkinson's in 98% of cases. Smartphone information could also be used to assess symptom levels and progression in those being treated for the disease, say the scientists. Mathematician Dr Max Little, from the University of Aston, who is leading the research, said: "Not only can you predict whether someone has Parkinson's disease or not, you can actually score their symptoms on clinical scales. "This new kind of remote data analysis will help patients to monitor their … Continue reading →

One of this year's five winners of the so-called American Nobels in medicine says every woman over the age of 30 needs to be tested for cancer-causing genetic mutations. The Albert and Mary Lasker Foundations Award for Special Achievement will go to Dr. Mary-Claire King, who correlated mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes with breast and ovarian cancer. Current guidelines discourage testing, but King says it would cost little and identify 250,000 to 400,000 American women with the cancer-causing genetic mutations. The Lasker awards each include a $250,000 honorarium and are to be presented in New York September 19. The Journal of the American Medical Association summarized Kings proposal in an article published to coincide with the Lasker award announcements. The Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research will be shared by Drs. Mahlon DeLong of Emory University in Atlanta and Alim Louis Benabid of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. They developed a surgical treatment for Parkinson's disease. In work that began in the late 1960s, DeLong traced Parkinson symptoms to over-activity in a specific part of the brain. Benabid, independently following up on that research, showed in 1995 that stimulating this area with a surgically implanted electrode could … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 8-Sep-2014 Contact: Rikke Byesen rb@nano.ku.dk 452-875-0413 Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen Revolutionary nanotechnology method could help improve the development of new medicine and reduce costs. Researchers from the Nano-Science Center and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen have developed a new screening method that makes it possible to study cell membrane proteins that bind drugs, such as cannabis and adrenaline, while reducing the consumption of precious samples by a billion times. About 40% of all medicines used today work through the so-called "G protein-coupled receptors". These receptors react to changes in the cell environment, for example, to increased amounts of chemicals like cannabis, adrenaline or the medications we take and are therefore of paramount importance to the pharmaceutical industry. "There is a lot of attention on research into "G protein-coupled receptors", because they have a key roll in recognizing and binding different substances. Our new method is of interest to the industry because it can contribute to faster and cheaper drug development", explains Professor Dimitrios Stamou, who heads the Nanomedicine research group at the Nano-Science Center, where the method has been developed. The new method is described in a publication at the … Continue reading →