"It may point to doing future studies. But I wouldn't recommend that my patients take L-dopa now. It could be dangerous."

So while there’s a lot more knowledge about the disease, the chemical L-dopa, discovered some 50 years ago, remains the gold standard of treatment.

At the time, the drug L-dopa, short for levodihydroxyphenylalanine, had begun to show promise as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease.