By Isabella Backman
September 10, 2026
A new clinical trial led by Yale School of Medicine's Jesse Cedarbaum, MD, professor of neurology, and David Hafler, MD, William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology, is the first such study to test whether a drug can slow or prevent the onset of Parkinson’s disease in people at risk.
The first warning signs of Parkinson’s disease can manifest decades before the onset of motor problems. One of these is a sleep condition in which individuals act out their dreams, often violently. Known as rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD), up to 90% of cases progress to Parkinson’s disease or a related brain disorder.
This years-long window between the development of RBD and the onset of Parkinson’s disease presents an opportunity to try to prevent the disorder before the motor symptoms arise. Research led by scientists at Yale School of Medicine on RBD and Parkinson’s disease suggests that inflammation in the spinal fluid may be contributing to the disease.
Now, in the new clinical trial, the researchers will investigate whether a drug called adalimumab (Humira), which is already used to treat inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, can prevent the emergence of Parkinson’s disease in individuals with RBD.
The study—An Exploratory Study of the Potential for Rational Immune System Manipulation to Prevent Emergence of Synucleinopathy Manifestations in Persons with REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, or “PRISMS” for short—recently enrolled its first participant. It is currently recruiting individuals between the ages of 50 and 80 with RBD across 15 participating sites in the United States and Canada.
“This is the first clinical trial of its kind to use an immunologically-based approach to try to slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease,” Cedarbaum says.
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