Emerging therapies in the pharmacological treatment of Parkinson's disease.

The pharmacological management of Parkinson's disease is a complex and dynamic task; there is no one 'right' strategy indicating which drugs should be used at a particular stage of the disease. There are now many different drugs belonging to several classes that may be effective, and there are still differences of opinion among leading clinicians about the best course of treatment. This review focuses on drug therapy for the motor impairment in Parkinson's disease.

Oral solution of levodopa ethylester for treatment of response fluctuations in patients with advanced Parkinson's disease.

Levodopa ethylester (LDEE), a highly soluble prodrug of levodopa, may overcome the impaired absorption of regular levodopa, due mainly to a combination of levodopa's poor solubility and delayed gastric emptying. We conducted a double-blind, levodopa-controlled, multicenter study of oral LDEE solution compared with standard levodopa-carbidopa (LD-CD) tablets. Sixty-two patients with Parkinson's disease who had "delayed on" and "no-on" subtypes of response fluctuations were randomly assigned for treatment with LDEE-CD or LD-CD 250/25 mg for 4 weeks (phase A).

Copolymer 1 (glatiramer acetate) in relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis: open multicenter study of alternate-day administration.

Daily 20-mg doses of Copolymer 1 have been shown to significantly decrease the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). In the present open-label study, patients with relapsing MS were treated with the same dose of Copolymer 1 administered on alternate days. Sixty-eight patients were recruited: fifty-one and forty-one patients completed 1 and 2 years of treatment respectively.

Hamilton Depression Scale in dementia.

Introduction: Wide variations in frequency of depression in primary degenerative dementia (PDD) and in vascular dementia (VD) have been reported. This may perhaps be due to inadequacy of common diagnostic tools in detecting depression in the face of cognitive decline. We evaluated here the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) in demented patients with PDD and VD.

Assessment of experimental autoimmune neuritis in the rat by electrophysiology of the tail nerve.

The assessment of experimental autoimmune neuritis (EAN) by electrophysiological studies of the sciatic innervation of the plantar muscle may be complicated by local inflammation. We therefore utilized the tail nerve-muscle system to monitor disease progression in 20 rats with EAN and 10 control rats. Early changes were detected in motor nerve conduction velocity (32.

Unilateral thermal anaesthesia.

A patient is described who had a deep parieto-temporal haemorrhage. Following resolution, the patient exhibited contralateral hemi-anaesthesia limited to the temperature sense. The possible mechanisms are discussed.

Release of platelet 5-hydroxytryptamine by plasma taken from patients during and between migraine attacks.

Experiments were carried out in order to further delineate the pathophysiology of the fall of plasma 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) during a migraine attack. Platelets from normal subjects were incubated with 14C-labelled 5-HT, and the release of 5-HT was measured following exposure of these platelets to plasma taken from migraine patients during an attack or at headache-free intervals. Plasma taken during attacks released significantly more 5-HT.