Parkinson's Disease Archives - Inspire Corporate

Are we moving beyond Levodopa for Parkinson’s Disease?

Are we moving beyond Levodopa for Parkinson’s Disease? By Kathleen Hoffman, PhD, MSPH In November, the American Academy of Neurologists (AAN) updated their 2002 guidelines for treatment of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) with dopaminergic drugs (drugs that improve dopamine release). The preeminent drug for treatment of early Parkinson’s, levodopa, creates the dopamine neurotransmitter that people with Parkinson’s progressively lack. Despite the fact that levodopa was approved to treat Parkinson’s over fifty years ago, the updated guidelines reaffirm that levodopa combined with carbidopa is still the best first-line treatment for motor symptoms of early PD when compared with the [...]

Listen to People Impacted by Rare Disease

Listen to People Impacted by Rare Disease By Kathleen D. Hoffman, PhD “The success (or failure) of the majority of rare disease drug development programmes rests on surrogate outcomes (e.g. laboratory measures, organ size) that may not reflect treatment benefits that patients value.”1 ~Morel and Canto Thomas Morel and Stefan Canto’s position paper from 2017 clearly describes the dilemma faced in rare disease research. Lab measures and organ size don’t speak to what patients with rare diseases experience, need or value. This focus on measures that are not meaningful impacts the development of rare disease treatments [...]