Can new drug classes and formulations help reduce breakthrough Parkinson’s activity?
Dr. Stuart Isaacson was recently interviewed about a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease.
Despite the past medical breakthrough of an orally available compound to replenish a diminished dopamine neurotransmitter in the brain, initial consistent therapeutic responses to levodopa in patients with Parkinson disease (PD) can eventually wane into “off” periods.
“After several years, sometimes as early as 1 or 2 years, sometimes in 4 or 5 years, but usually in the first couple of years, this so-called honeymoon period begins to end, and many patients begin to notice that 3 or 4 hours after taking a dose of carbidopa/levodopa, their symptoms return and break through,” Stuart Isaacson, MD, director and founder of the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center of Boca Raton in Florida, told NeurologyLive®. “These symptoms can be motor or nonmotor, but when these symptoms come out at the end of a dose, we call it the beginning of an off period.”
Read this story on how to keep treatment response “on” to learn more.
