Parkinson’s Disease drug first produced in 1865 ‘may provide relief’ for people with advanced symptoms

A DRUG first produced in 1865 may provide relief for people with advanced Parkinson’s, tests show.

The medicine, apomorphine, reduces periods of immobility in sufferers by 2½ hours a day — when other drugs do not work.

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Some 71 per cent felt better on it compared to 18 per cent on a placebo.

Apomorphine also cut involuntary movements often seen with levodopa, the drug most often prescribed for Parkinson’s.

Doctors at Danube Hospital in Vienna said their study was the first to show the effectiveness of apomorphine, which has been overtaken by later Parkinson’s drugs.

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The drug, first produced in 1865, was originally used to treat advanced Parkinson's in the United States in 1950.

Its use grew in the 1990s when European doctors starting using it to treat fluctuations in mobility that could not be controlled by the pills.

In the new study, researchers recruited 107 people with advanced Parkinson's disease from 23 centres in seven countries.

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The study found that those who were given apomorphine had a significantly greater reduction of "off" time than those who were given the placebo infusion, with, on average, 2.5 hours less "off" time per day, while those who received the placebo infusion had an average 30 minutes per day reduction in "off" time.

The improvement was apparent within the first week of treatment, according to the researchers.

At the same time, for those who received apomorphine, there was an increase of "on" time without the abnormal involuntary movements.

The participants in the trial were also asked to evaluate how well they thought the treatment worked.

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Those who received apomorphine gave their treatment higher scores after 12 weeks than those who received the placebo infusion.

In the apomorphine group, 71 per cent of patients felt improved, compared to 18 per cent on placebo, whereas 19 per cent worsened on apomorphine compared to 45 per cent on placebo.

The researchers said that apomorphine was generally well tolerated and there were no serious side effects.

Study author Doctor Regina Katzenschlager said: "It is our hope that these findings confirming the efficacy of apomorphine infusion will encourage doctors in the United States to offer this treatment to their patients and assess its efficacy in their own clinical practice."