We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with the testing, especially to our volunteers, for without them we wouldn’t have been able to do this. The initial lockdown due to COVID-19 led us to push back the start of our testing to when times were calmer, but given the circumstances, we are very grateful that the participants allowed us to carry out our socially distanced, COVID-conscious testing with them. When we completed our first round of testing pre-COVID, the results of which can be seen here, participants demonstrated an average of 16% improvement across a number of motor tasks.

In this round of testing, we wanted to further explore the utility of CUE1 , and so we listened to the recommendations from Parkinson’s clinicians who advised us to record the MDS-UPDRS Section III score. This is widely regarded as the gold standard for Parkinsonian symptoms. This round of testing hence involved measurements of UPDRS by an internal assessor, as well as Timed Tapping and Timed Up & Go (TuG) 3-metre tests. The results were really encouraging for us, demonstrating that there was an average improvement of 9.3 points above baseline in the MDS-UPDRS Section III scores with the CUE1 intervention, which is significantly higher than a clinically relevant difference of 3.25 points. The Timed Tapping task saw an average performance improvement of 19% and the TuG 3m task saw an average performance improvement of 15%. This user testing hence provides promising evidence that CUE 1 is providing effective treatment of movement symptoms in People with Parkinson’s. You can read the full report here.

While the results are promising, they will still need to be reproduced in a clinical setting before its effectiveness can be authenticated. We are currently preparing for a randomised double-blinded clinical trial in the U.K., and we will be sure to keep you updated with how this develops. We are also planning on launching CUE1 in early 2021. If you are interested in getting CUE1 when it comes out you can sign up to the waiting list to show your interest, and we will keep you updated with any news or progress about the launch.

We had an amazing time with all our participants and it was an invaluable time for the Charco team. If you are interested in our testing stories, you can read our recent blog post- John and Barbara: how we learn from the unexpected.

Finally, as some may be aware we like to share our developments and progress once a month with you all through our newsletter. As we know not everyone is super-active on social media, this is our way of keeping you in the loop on everything Charco-related that has been going on.:) Please feel free to sign up if you’re interested!