Son charged with 1st-degree murder after father's death on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast
A 26-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in connection to the death of his father on the Sunshine Coast last year.
A higher-than-expected prevalence of gene mutations in Parkinson’s disease patients suggests genetic testing should be offered to them more broadly, researchers said on Monday in the medical journal Brain.
Genetic profiling performed on more than 8,000 patients of varying races and ethnicities, all with Parkinson's disease, showed 13 per cent had a genetic form of the progressive brain disorder, the researchers found.
That rate was 18 per cent in patients with known risk factors, such as an earlier age at onset, Parkinson’s disease in a first-degree relative, or certain ancestry such as Ashkenazi Jewish, Spanish Basque or North African Berber.
Among patients with no known risk factors, more than 9 per cent had a predisposing genetic mutation.
With new gene-specific drugs for the disease entering the research pipeline, the implications of the findings are significant, the researchers said.
Previous studies had suggested that about 5 per cent to 10 per cent of Parkinson’s disease cases were linked with genetic variants – and most of those studies had been limited to patients with known risk factors.
Presently, only a small fraction of people with Parkinson’s disease receive genetic testing, largely because neurologists are uncomfortable with their knowledge of Parkinson’s disease genetics, access to genetic counsellors is limited, and the identification of a genetic basis has been unlikely to impact a patient’s treatment, said James Beck, senior vice president and chief scientific officer of the Parkinson’s Foundation, the study’s sponsor.
But with recent advances, doctors “are now on the cusp of figuring out how to treat patients based on genetics,” Beck said.
With trials of gene-specific treatments underway, and genetic results potentially impacting disease prognosis and shedding light on familial risks, clinical genetic testing should be offered to everyone with Parkinson’s disease, the research team concluded.
(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Stephen Coates)
A 26-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in connection to the death of his father on the Sunshine Coast last year.
Loblaw is launching a pilot program that will see employees at two Calgary locations don body-worn cameras in an effort to increase safety.
Starting next year, China will raise its retirement age for workers, which is now among the youngest in the world's major economies, in an effort to address its shrinking population and aging work force.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Ukraine should be allowed to strike deep inside Russia, despite Moscow threatening that this would draw Canada and its allies into direct war.
The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Two sisters have finally been reunited with a plane their father built 90 years ago, that is also considered an important part of Canadian aviation history.
For decades, the Town of Ste. Anne was stagnant, but that all changed about 10 years ago. Now it is seeing one of the highest spikes of growth in the province.
A Canadian warship has seized more than 1,400 kilograms of cocaine during an anti-drug-trafficking operation in Central America.
The experience of 23-year-old Muskoka, Ont., resident Robyn Penniall, who recently had a stroke, comes as concerns are being raised about the future of health care in her community.
Two sisters have finally been reunited with a plane their father built 90 years ago, that is also considered an important part of Canadian aviation history.
A Facebook post has sparked a debate in Gimli about whether to make a cosmetic change to its iconic statue.
A Pokémon card shop in Richmond is coming off a record-setting month, highlighted by a customer opening a pack to discover one of the most sought-after cards in the world.
Abandoned homes line the streets of Lauder, a town that's now a ghost of what it once was. Yet inside, a small community is thriving.
Perhaps Saskatchewan's most famous encounter with Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP/UFO) – "The Langenburg Event" is now being immortalized in the form of a collector's coin.
It's been 420 days since 22-year-old Abbey Bickell was killed in a car crash in Burnaby, a stretch full of heartbreak for her family as they not only grieved her death, but anxiously waited for progress in the police investigation. Wednesday, they finally got some good news.
A Simcoe, Ont. woman has been charged with assault with a weapon after spraying her neighbour with a water gun.
The dream of a life on water has drowned in a sea of sadness for a group of Chatham-Kent, Ont. residents who paid a Wallaceburg-based company for a floating home they never received.
In 2022, Tanya Frisk-Welburn and her husband bought what they hoped would be a dream home in Mexico.