UCLA researchers may have found a key to determining which Parkinson's disease patients will experience a more rapid decline in motor function, sparking hopes for the development of new therapies and helping identify those who could benefit most from early intervention.

Though there is no known cure for Parkinson’s disease, there are means to control the symptoms. Researchers at UCLA may have found a way to determine which patients will experience a more rapid decline in motor function, which is potentially beneficial in developing new therapies and identifying who can benefit the most from early intervention.

Two studies by neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center suggest that, in the future, colonic tissue obtained during either colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy may be used to predict who will develop Parkinson's disease, a neurodegenerative disorder of aging that that leads to progressive deterioration of motor function due to loss of neurons in the brain that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter essential to executing movement.

Last year, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that small amounts of a misfolded brain protein can be taken up by healthy neurons, replicating within them to cause neurodegeneration.

Injection of a small amount of clumped protein triggers a cascade of events leading to a Parkinson's-like disease in mice.