Researchers and doctors are constantly working to improve upon the treatments for Parkinson’s disease. In particular, as more information becomes available about the condition and how it progresses, newer therapies to better control the symptoms are being developed.

When a new medication is tested for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, the pharmaceutical manufacturer will work with doctors and researchers to perform a number of clinical trials. The clinical trial comes at the end of a long and careful research process and is an extremely important step in furthering medical progress.

To be the most useful, clinical trials often require the involvement of a large number of participants and may last for several years.

What are the latest medicines for Parkinson’s disease?

 
Introduction

Encouragingly, treatments in the management of Parkinson’s disease are continually being improved. In particular, as more information becomes available about the condition and how it progresses, newer therapies to better control the symptoms are being developed

Research
Researchers are looking for medications that target Parkinson’s in a completely different way to levodopa, either by acting on different areas in the brain and/or by replacing or modifying other chemicals and neurotransmitters in the brain.
New treatments
In addition to new symptomatic therapies, researchers are trying to identify treatments that might prevent or slow down the degeneration of nerve cells (often called neurodegeneration), although these are only in the very early stages of identification and development.

The symptoms of Parkinson’s disease only begin to appear when the levels of dopamine in the brain fall below about 20% of normal. Researchers are therefore looking for ways to identify people with Parkinson’s before symptoms begin to appear, and ways to stop or slow down the degeneration in these individuals before it takes hold.

TOP