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Drug discovery by scientists joins world's largest trial of Parkinson's treatments

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Drug discovery by scientists joins world's largest trial of Parkinson's treatments

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A liver drug could be used to slow down the progression of Parkinson's disease as it joins the world's largest trial of treatments for the condition.

This comes after researchers at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust discovered that ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) has considerable promise to improve the function of mitochondria, known as the cell's power plants, in Parkinson's disease and, by doing so, slow the progression of this currently relentlessly progressive disease.

UDCA was identified as a potential new avenue for treatment of Parkinson's following groundbreaking University of Sheffield–led research that screened an entire drug library in tissue samples from Parkinson's patients for the first time.

It is now the third of a new wave of treatments with disease-modifying potential to be tested in parallel against a placebo in the Edmond J Safra Accelerating Clinical Trials in Parkinson's Disease (EJS ACT-PD) trial.

The loss of mitochondrial function in dopamine-producing nerve cells in the movement-controlling area of the brain is believed to play an important role in the progression of Parkinson's. By protecting these nerve cells from cellular malfunction, researchers believe UDCA can play a key role in slowing Parkinson's progression.

The inclusion of the UDCA drug in the innovative multidrug EJS ACT-PD trial marks an important milestone for the platform, which aims to speed up the search for effective treatments for Parkinson's by testing more drugs faster and more efficiently than ever before.


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