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Earwax Biomarkers for Early Parkinson’s Disease Detection

Most treatments for Parkinson’s disease (PD) only slow disease progression. Early intervention for the neurological disease that worsens over time is therefore critical to optimize care, but that requires early diagnosis. Current tests, like clinical rating scales and neural imaging, can be subjective and costly. Now, researchers in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry report the initial development of a system that inexpensively screens for PD from the odors in a person’s earwax.

Previous research has shown that changes in sebum, an oily substance secreted by the skin, could help identify people with PD. Specifically, sebum from people with PD may have a characteristic smell because volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by sebum are altered by disease progression — including neurodegeneration, systemic inflammation and oxidative stress.

However, when sebum on the skin is exposed to environmental factors like air pollution and humidity, its composition can be altered, making it an unreliable testing medium. But the skin inside the ear canal is kept away from the elements. So, Hao Dong, Danhua Zhu and colleagues wanted to focus their PD screening efforts on earwax, which mostly consists of sebum and is easily sampled.

Scientists uncover kidney-to-brain route for Parkinson’s-related protein spread

A groundbreaking study suggests that Parkinson’s disease may begin in the kidneys, where a toxic protein builds up and travels to the brain. This discovery could reshape our understanding of the disease’s origins and risk factors.

Alzheimer’s: Bacteria that cause stomach ulcers may also protect brain

Every three seconds, someone in the world develops dementia. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for between 60% and 70% of all cases.

Although scientists have made significant progress in understanding the disease, there’s still no cure. That’s partly because Alzheimer’s disease has multiple causes—many of which are still not fully understood.

Two proteins which are widely believed to play central roles in Alzheimer’s disease are amyloid-beta and tau. Amyloid-beta forms sticky plaques on the outside of brain cells. This disrupts communication between neurons. Tau accumulates inside brain cells, where it twists into tangles. This ultimately leads to cell death. These plaques and tangles are the hallmark features of Alzheimer’s disease.

Scientists find cellular brain changes tied to PTSD

The human brain is made up of billions of interconnected cells that are constantly talking to each other. A new study published in Nature zooms in to the single-cell level to see how this cellular communication may be going wrong in brains affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Until recently, researchers did not have the technology to study within individual cells. But now that it’s available, a team led by Matthew Girgenti, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, has been analyzing to uncover genetic variants that might be associated with psychiatric diseases such as (MDD) and PTSD.

Their latest study is one of the first to examine a major psychiatric disorder, PTSD, at the single-cell level. For years, doctors have been prescribing antidepressants to treat the condition because there are currently no drugs specifically designed for PTSD. Girgenti hopes that identifying novel molecular signatures associated with the psychiatric disease can help researchers learn how to develop new drugs or repurpose existing ones to treat it more effectively.

Brain organizes visuomotor associations into structured graph-like mental schemes, study finds

Graphs, visual representations outlining the relationships between different entities, concepts or variables, can be very effective in summarizing complex patterns and information. Past psychology studies suggest that the human brain stores memories and experiences following graph-like and structured patterns, specifically as a network of associations, also referred to as cognitive graphs.

These cognitive graphs are hypothesized to represent different concepts as “nodes” and the relationships between these concepts as edges connecting these nodes. By organizing information in a structured way, they can allow people to apply knowledge they have acquired in the past to new situations and draw conclusions about what is happening based on previous experiences.

The role of cognitive graphs has been widely investigated in the past, with most studies focusing on their contribution to the storage and retrieval of facts and knowledge (i.e., declarative memories). In contrast, the extent to which they influence the planning and control of movements remains poorly understood.