New Drug May Slow Progression of Parkinson’s Disease – Newsmax

A new drug known as D-512 is being developed at New York's Binghamton University to treat Parkinson's disease. It promises to limit the progression of Parkinson's disease while also relieving symptoms more effectively than drugs currently available.

About 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson's every year, and thousands more remain undiagnosed. It's considered a disease of aging, since the onset of symptoms occurs around the age of 60 and the risk rises with advancing age.

Symptoms of Parkinson's disease include tremors, difficulty standing and moving, involuntary movements, and loss of balance. Currently, symptoms are commonly managed using selective dopamine receptor agonists, but they lose effectiveness as the disease progresses and do nothing to slow progression of the disease.

In an animal study, researchers compared the effects of D-512 to the dopamine agonist ropinirole. They found that D-512 was more effective than ropinirole in treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease while also prolonging the time window in which the animals showed benefits. Prior research demonstrated that D-512 may also protect against the progression of Parkinson's disease.

"A major issue for Parkinson's disease patients is the need to take multiple medications, multiple times per day," said researcher David Lindenbach. "So, we were quite astounded to discover that our new compound, D-512, was superior to the widely-used drug, ropinirole, in terms of maximal symptom relief and duration of action."

D-512 may also have fewer side effects than current medications. Over time patients develop hyperkinetic movements that are hard to control, called dyskinesia.

"What you have is a better therapeutic index with our drug versus the current medication. And when you couple that with the fact that it's seemingly multifunctional...then what we have is a compound that just isn't currently available to Parkinson's patients but that we think has a lot of promise," said Binghamton University psychology professor Chris Bishop.

One feature that makes D-512 unique is that the molecule itself is an antioxidant. "This antioxidant property is important because a major cause of Parkinson's disease appears to be excessive oxidative stress in a small group of movement-facilitating brain cells," said Lindenbach

In future research, Bishop wants to determine whether D-512 will slow disease in late stages. "It seems to work very well if you give it really early, before the disease takes hold," he said, "but looking at it at later time points and determining whether it can slow the disease down once it's really taken hold, also has important implications."

The study was published in The British Journal of Pharmacology.

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New Drug May Slow Progression of Parkinson's Disease - Newsmax