And once symptoms appear, it’s too late for a cure.

What if a therapy that treats the root causes of Parkinson’s, not just the symptoms, could be started earlier?

Researchers in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio are studying changes in Parkinson’s-affected cells at various stages of the disease, long before any symptoms are evident. They describe the changes in an April issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

The hope of the research is twofold: 1) gain understandings that can be used to formulate a drug to arrest the disease at a halfway point, and 2) lengthen the time when patients with Parkinson’s can lead healthy, productive lives.

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