Parkinson’s Study Shows Reduced Oxygen Prevents and Reverses Brain Damage

A study from researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Mass General Brigham has shown that continuous exposure to low-oxygen air to create hypoxia protects against neurodegeneration and restores movement in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease (PD). The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience , offer a potential new therapeutic strategy that could prevent or even reverse the progression of PD by limiting oxygen availability to the brain.

“The fact that we actually saw some reversal of neurological damage is really exciting,” said co-senior author Vamsi Mootha, MD, an institute member at the Broad and a professor at Harvard Medical School. “It tells us that there is a window during which some neurons are dysfunctional but not yet dead—and that we can restore thei