Teva Says Parkinson's Drug Is First to Slow Disease

From Bloomberg:
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. said its Azilect pill is the first to slow the progression of Parkinson's disease in new findings that may increase sales of the medicine to more than $1 billion.

Patients who took the 1-milligram dose of Azilect at the outset of an 18-month trial showed ``significant improvement'' over patients who started nine months later, Petah Tikvah, Israel-based Teva said in a statement today. The test results were presented at a medical conference in Madrid today.

Azilect, Teva's second original product, was introduced in 2005 to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's, an incurable disease that destroys patients' nerve functions. Teva needs to replace revenue from its first original drug, Copaxone for multiple sclerosis, before it loses patent protection in 2014. Peak sales of the pill may now surpass $1 billion, instead of an estimated $250 million a year, said Ronny Gal, who follows Teva at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York, in a June 16 interview. ...more

Parkinson's drugs increase risk of impulse disorders

From CTV News:
A common class of drugs prescribed to control Parkinson's disease symptoms increases the risk of gambling, excess shopping and compulsive sexual behaviour, a new study finds.

Canadian and American researchers found that study subjects who were taking dopamine agonist drugs, which help control movement problems, were two to three times more likely to have at least one of four common impulse control disorders.

About 13 per cent of subjects had at least one disorder, while one third of the subjects had more than one disorder.

The disorders are pathological gambling, compulsive buying, compulsive sexual behaviour and binge eating. ...more

NSAIDs Protect Against Parkinson's Disease

From US News and World Report:
Taking over-the-counter pain medicines called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health in Los Angeles.

The study included 579 men and women (half with Parkinson's disease) who were asked if they'd taken aspirin or non-aspirin NSAIDs (such as ibuprofen) once a week or more for at least a month at any time in their lives.

Those who took two or more pills (either aspirin or a non-aspirin NSAID) a week for at least a month were classified as regular users, while those who took fewer pills were non-regular users. ...more

New treatment promising for Parkinson's disease

From CTV News:
In what could be a breakthrough in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, an experimental treatment using gene therapy has delivered promising results, improving the symptoms of 12 patients.

The study was the first-ever on the use of gene therapy to battle Parkinson's disease, a disease marked by tremors, rigidity in their limbs, and slowness of movement.

In the small study of 11 men and one woman, surgeons from New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center injected a harmless gene-bearing virus into the brains of the patients. Over the course of one year, they found that the treatment improved motor function for Parkinson's patients without side effects. ...more

Drugs company cracks Parkinson's with cure

I've never heard of this drug before, but it sounds quite promising. It's probably a bit too simplistic to think it's the definitive cure for Parkinson's, but it does sound like it could be a breakthrough.

From the Cambridge (UK) Evening News:
A small drugs company at Godmanchester has come up with a cure for Parkinson's disease, which could also lead to a cure for Alzheimer's.

Phytopharm has been working for some years on reversing the devastating effects of these two killer diseases and announced last night that it had succeeded.

The drug, Cogane, works by stimulating naturally produced proteins that can regenerate neurons in the brain.

It will be five years, however, before the new drug passes all the regulatory tests and becomes generally available. ...more

Depression May Be Early Sign of Parkinson's Disease

We know that dopamine plays a role in both illnesses, so it makes sense that a link between the two exists. I find it surprising that it's taken this long for the connection to be shown in a study. I think this information will be considered essential in the future and may result in the faster diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease.

From CBC News:
In some cases, depression can be an early manifestation of Parkinson's disease, new research suggests.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health compared antidepressant use among more than 1,000 individuals with Parkinson's disease to more than 6,600 age- and gender-matched individuals without the degenerative neurological illness.

They found that people currently on antidepressants had an 80 percent higher risk of developing Parkinson's disease than those who had never taken antidepressants. This was true for both men and women, regardless of age or the class of antidepressant used. ...more

Health Canada reviewing link between Parkinson's drug Permax and heart valve conditions

From Health Canada:
Health Canada is informing Canadians that Permax, a drug used for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, has been withdrawn from the U.S. market amidst concerns about an association with cardiac valvulopathy, a condition involving inflammation or stiffening of the heart valves.

Permax (a brand name of the drug pergolide) has been marketed in Canada since 1991 for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The risk of heart valve problems has been known with this drug and is in the current labelling. Health Canada communicated information regarding this risk to Canadian healthcare providers and patients in 2003 and again in 2004.
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