Small Particles, Big Potential: Polymeric Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery in Parkinson's Disease.

Despite the availability of a number of efficacious treatments for Parkinson's disease, their limitations and drawbacks, particularly related to low brain bioavailability and associated side effects, emphasize the need for alternative and more effective therapeutic approaches. Nanomedicine, the application of nanotechnology in medicine, has received considerable interest in recent years as a method of effectively delivering potentially therapeutic molecules to the brain. In particular, polymeric nanoparticles, constructed from biodegradable polymer, have shown great promise in enhancing therapeutic efficacy, reducing toxicity, and ensuring targeted delivery.

Pathological Validation of the MDS Criteria for the Diagnosis of Multiple System Atrophy.

Background: The recent International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society diagnostic criteria for multiple system atrophy (MDS-MSA) have been developed to improve diagnostic accuracy although their diagnostic properties have not been evaluated.

Objectives: The aims were to validate the MDS-MSA diagnostic criteria against neuropathological diagnosis and compare their diagnostic performance to previous criteria and diagnosis in clinical practice.

Methods: Consecutive patients with sporadic, progressive, adult-onset parkinsonism, or cerebellar ataxia from the Queen Square Brain Bank between 2009 and 2019 were selected and divided based on neuropathological diagnosis into MSA and non-MSA.

Clinical Diagnostic Accuracy of Parkinson's Disease: Where Do We Stand?

Background: Clinical diagnostic accuracy of Parkinson's disease (PD) remains suboptimal. Changes in disease concept may have improved clinical diagnostic accuracy in the past decade. However, current clinical diagnostic criteria have not been validated against neuropathological confirmation.

We Move or Are We Moved? Unpicking the Origins of Voluntary Movements to Better Understand Semivoluntary Movements.

The capacity for voluntary control is seen as essential to human movements; the sense that one intended to move (willing) and those actions were self-generated (self-agency) gives the sense of voluntariness and of being in control. While the mechanisms underlying voluntary movement have long been unclear, recent neuroscientific tools have identified networks of different brain areas, namely, the prefrontal cortex, supplementary motor area, and parietal cortex, that underlie voluntary action. Dysfunction in these brain areas can result in different forms of semivoluntary movement as the borderland of voluntary and involuntary movement where a person may experience a disordered sense of will or agency, and thus the movement is experienced as unexpected and involuntary, for an otherwise voluntary-appearing movement.

Profiling the most elderly parkinson's disease patients: Does age or disease duration matter?

Background: Despite our ageing populations, elderly patients are underrepresented in clinical research, and ageing research is often separate from that of Parkinson's disease (PD). To our knowledge, no previous study has focused on the most elderly ('old-old', age ≥ 85 years) patients with PD to reveal how age directly influences PD clinical progression.

Objective: We compared the clinical characteristics and pharmacological profiles, including complications of levodopa treatment, disease progression, disabilities, and comorbidities of the old-old with those of comparable younger ('young-old', age 60-75 years) PD patients.

COVID-19: An Early Review of Its Global Impact and Considerations for Parkinson's Disease Patient Care.

While many infectious disorders are unknown to most neurologists, COVID-19 is very different. It has impacted neurologists and other health care workers, not only in our professional lives but also through the fear and panic within our own families, colleagues, patients and their families, and even in the wider public. COVID-19 affects all sorts of individuals, but the elderly with underlying chronic conditions are particularly at risk of severe disease, or even death.

Concurrence of Myasthenia Gravis and Thyroid Disorders: A Retrospective Database Study.

Introduction: Both myasthenia gravis (MG) and autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITDs) are autoimmune diseases. Graves'disease (GD) is the most common AITD reported to be associated with MG. Currently, there is limited data on prevalence and clinical features/outcomes of MG in various thyroid diseases in a large database report.