Tom Payne

Is mitochondrial pathology universal in idiopathic Parkinson's disease? We find widespread mitochondrial pathology in the brain of ~25% of individuals with PD, linked to a non-tremor dominant motor phenotype. Could this be a "mitoPD" subtype? nature.com/articles/s4146…

Thank you and the wider team for having me!

Really enjoyed the day lots of interesting talks and exciting research happening in our @SheffieldBRC and @CRFSheffield

On #WorldParkinsonsDay I'm very proud to be part of a team and institute working towards effective disease modifying treatments for Parkinson's

@foltynie @ajlees @TheLancet This series has been brilliant (and saves me a job of putting together a reading list now for lectures) great article!

Many thanks to esteemed authors especially @ajlees and of course @TheLancet for helping us write the third in this series of articles on Parkinson’s. authors.elsevier.com/a/1iSC0V-4XL3kI

@ajlees Completely agree, patient’s know what matters to them. Questionnaires rob the patient of the opportunity to contextualize their symptoms properly. Enquiring about further symtpoms of their condition they may not have recognised should be tailored and guided by clinical experience

Changing medical taxonomy especially in psychiatry and using questionnaires doesn’t relieve a patient’s anxiety about not being believed. Is ‘health anxiety’ a disease or a normal physiological response? Reduced to a number | Practical Neurology pn.bmj.com/content/23/6/5…

📢 Another exciting opportunity to join the NIHR Sheffield BRC as a #ClinicalFellow! Work on stimulating projects across our Translational #Neuroscience theme. Get mentored by leading clinicians and scientists. 🔗 Learn more & apply here: bit.ly/3vw09nm

Nothing makes you realise how fast the last 12 months have flown by more than the annual researchfish submission email. Felt like I only did it last month. Potential to harness this for time travel to the future?

@wt_clarke Agree! Needs to begin at undergraduate level and progress through postgraduate study as well. Unviersities need to embed coding in STEM as a core skill at all levels for the future with approriate teaching and support for all

2024 Academic hot take: It is unacceptable for undergraduate science courses to not have a major computing and coding component. Both pervade nearly all technical jobs. In research, I think lack of reproducibility arises from scientists not being able to use the right tools.

As a #DoctorWho fan and scientist this is absolutely brilliant! Maybe I need to start looking at framing all my Parkinson’s research in the context of Doctor Who. Very entertaining read @Richard_D_Riley

Really proud to be part of this paper and another big chunk of work from my PhD published! Many thanks to funders @MichaelJFoxOrg and all participants involved!

Fantastic paper, congrats!

@MichaelOkun @Penn @PennNeurology Neuropathologically its hard to argue not putting them under the same umbrella. However, there is still some clinical utility to differentiate PD and DLB, if at the least to guide patients and families regarding prognosis and treatment approaches

Should the names Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy Bodies be unified as 'one.' Dan Weintraub @Penn @PennNeurology says YES rip the bandaid off and 'tear down this wall. This has been very controversial for decades. Interested in everyone's thoughts on this viewpoint just published. Some reasons listed by Dan: 1- Approximately a quarter century ago, a conundrum was created when a consensus conference codified (and later recodified) separate definitions for two clinical entities, Parkinson's disease (PD) dementia (PDD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), based on a recommended “one-year rule.” 2- When James Parkinson first described the disorder that bears his name more than 200 years ago, he declared “the senses and intellects being uninjured” and “powers of his mind, unimpaired.” However, the picture changed in the 20th century. 3- Other reasons: pathophysiology, clinical symptoms, biomarkers. 4- The best way to illustrate the problem with the status quo is to list the many terms and acronyms used to describe various clinical disorders and neuropathological definitions falling under this umbrella. They include PD, DLB, LBDs, Lewy body disease (another LBD), PDD, PD-MCI, and prodromal DLB or MCI with Lewy body (MCI-LB). 5- The recent introduction of α-synuclein SAA seeding assay as a highly sensitive and specific biomarker of the core PD pathophysiological process has been transformative for the field. Ok everyone, time to weigh in with your thoughts! Nice pic below from Ian Keith on researchgate. …mentdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/md…

@MarkRCookson1 I both simultaneously agree and feel personally attacked 😂

@hamzah2506 Watching many of my peers have to go through this as well, it presents huge challenges to delivering good training both to those individuals and the wider training programme with SpR’s getting pulled in multiple different directions, makes rotas hugely challenging to design

@martinw3141 Big fan of that tablecloth!

@mr_spectroscopy you may also be interested in this, we used 31P-MRS to assess target engagement of UDCA in the midbrain

@MatildeSassani @ee_buckley @am_sheffgenet @bhmullish @claudiamazza5 @l_vangelder

Very proud that our phase 2 study of UDCA in Parkinson’s has been published by @movedisorder! Many thanks to all participants, collaborators and funders inc. Jon Moulton charity trust and @CureParkinsonsT! @SheffieldBRC @neuroshef @foltynie #parkinsons doi.org/10.1002/mds.29…

New double blind study results of Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) in #parkinsons as a possible mitochondrial rescue agent. Great study by Bandmann and colleagues, 'Midbrain 31P-MRS demonstrated an increase in both Gibbs free energy and inorganic phosphate levels in the UDCA treatment group compared to placebo, reflecting improved ATP hydrolysis. Sensor-based gait analysis indicated a possible improvement of cadence (steps per minute) and other gait parameters in the UDCA group compared to placebo. In contrast, subjective assessment applying the MDS-UPDRS-III failed to detect a difference between treatment groups.' Interesting finding which raise the question as to what outcomes are sensitive enough to detect changes. …mentdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/md…

@MichaelOkun Many thanks for the kind words! Although MDS-UPDRS can be helpful, I believe we need to move towards more sensitive and objective measures focusing on core features that affect all people with #Parkinsons early on, such as gait rather than very heterogenous features (e.g. tremor)

🚶‍♂️🔍 Join our study on visualizing walking data! 🔑 Share your input! People with PD, MS, COPD, and hip fracture, we need your experiences. 🌟Help us create meaningful visualizations. Register for our short study: forms.office.com/e/9gbN1YtytZ #WalkingData #PD #MS #COPD #HipFracture