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April 11 is World Parkinson’s Disease Day. The event is held every year to raise awareness about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and encourage patients.
Unfortunately, PD is one of the neurological diseases (an intractable disease) for which there is no cure. Therefore, the primary treatment for PD is symptomatic treatment, and medication treatment is the mainstay of treatment.
On World PD Day, CareNet surveyed 100 neurologists among its member physicians who treat patients with PD regularly, asking them about “Challenges and expectations for PD treatment.” The results revealed the following.
Regarding “The most common problems or dissatisfactions with PD medication treatment,” the most common response at 52% (constituting more than half the respondents) was “treatment efficacy, symptom control.”
This was followed by “dose adjustment, medication switching” (15%), “medication compliance” (12%), and “side effects” (12%).
When asked about “Symptoms that are least likely to respond to treatment with PD medication,” the most common response at 44% was “non-motor symptoms (sleep disorders, mental, cognitive, and behavioral disorders, autonomic disorders, sensory disorders, etc.),” followed by “frozen gait, orthostatic hypotension” (21%), and “motor symptoms (immobility, tremor, muscle stiffness, and postural retention disorder)” (20%).
The most common response in the category “What you expect most from new medications in development for PD treatment” was “antibody medications targeting alpha-synuclein” at 32%, followed by “regenerative medicine using iPS cells” (24%), and “Levodopa and carbidopa for continuous subcutaneous injection” (21%).
These three medications accounted for 77% of the total, indicating a tendency toward medications with high expectations from physicians.
PD physicians continue to demand medications with high therapeutic efficacy or curative treatment, and for new medications in development, antibody medications and regenerative medicine are highly anticipated.
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