(RxWiki News) Exciting progress is being made in the treatment of advanced Parkinson's disease. Levodopa-carbidopa (Sinemet) intestinal gel (LCIG), shows great promise minimizing the number of times patients experience symptoms.
LCIG is administered via a portable pump through a surgically-implanted gastric tube.
"Promising Phase III results from LCIG treating advanced Parkinson's disease."
LCIG is an investigational therapy that achieves continuous dopaminergic stimulation for up to 16 hours. Oral forms of Sinemet have been used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease for more than 40 years.
But advanced Parkinson's disease becomes nonresponsive to the oral form. LCIG provides a continuous "drip" to the small intestine where it is absorbed into the bloodstream. The continuous delivery of the medication is advantageous for advanced Parkinson's disease treatment.
Alberto Espay, M.D., assistant professor of neurology, University of Cincinnati Neuroscience Institute, director of clinical research, Gardner Family Center for Parkinson's disease and one of the lead investigators explains that the goal of treating advanced Parkinson's disease is to provide patients with as much time as possible not experiencing symptoms while limiting their time experiencing troublesome dyskinesias.
The preliminary data from this study of LCIG shows meaningful improvements in time without symptoms and time experiencing dyskinesias.
Eugene Sun, M.D., vice president, Global Pharmaceutical Clinical Development, Abbott, observes that patients with advanced Parkinson's disease currently don't have adequate treatment options to manage their disease as it progresses. The data regarding LCIG looks promising to become a viable option for patients unable to get a response from oral medications.
In an interim analysis of the long-term study, data from 192 patients with advanced Parkinson's disease who had completed 12 weeks of treatment with LCIG reveal that patients experienced an average of 3.9 fewer hours experiencing symptoms and 4.6 additional hours not experiencing dyskinesias. Surgically-related complications did occur in 87.5 percent of the patients though.
Surgical complications included: Abdominal pain present in 31 percent of the patients, complications of device insertion in 21 percent of the patients, and pain from the surgery in 18 percent of the patients.
The most serious complications were abdominal inflammation which occurred in 4 percent of the patients and gas or air in the peritoneal cavity which occurred in 6 percent of the patients. Seven percent of the patients withdrew from the study due to their complications.(30.7 percent), complications of device insertion (21.4 percent) and procedural pain (17.7 percent).
