Outcomes associated with pharmacologic treatments in Parkinson's disease: a review of recent literature

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) affects nearly 1 million Americans with a mean onset age of 60 years. Its progressive, neurodegenerative nature, causing motor complications and affecting mood, has a considerable impact on a patient's health-related quality of life. Pharmacologic therapies are the most widely utilized treatment. The broad range of drugs for treating PD warrants an assessment of each medication's health-related outcomes, which includes consideration of clinical, economic and patient-centered outcomes. This review seeks to explore the outcomes associated with drugs frequently appearing in the literature of the past 5 years and to comment on the direction of pharmacologic research and management of PD pharmacotherapy in the future.

Keywords::

• clinical outcome
• COMT inhibitor
• DA
• dopamine agonists
• dyskinesia
• economic outcome
• fibrotic heart valve
• HRQoL
• levodopa
• MAO inhibitor
• Parkinson's disease
• rasagiline
• ropinirole
• subcutaneous apomorphine
• transdermal rotigotine
• tremor