Worsening of motor performance in patients with Parkinson's disease following transdermal nicotine administration

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in the context of parkinson's disease in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Nicotine has been reported to have positive effects on motor performance in patients with Parkinson's disease.

The study was performed using a double-blind crossover design.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 16 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

Because people in this Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Blinding on both sides kept the patients and researchers unaware of who received Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide).

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) group a baseline to be compared against.

In the crossover set-up each of the patients took both Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) and the comparison in turn, acting as their own control.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Administration, Cutaneous, Antiparkinson Agents, Corpus Striatum, Dopamine, Motor Skills, Neural Inhibition and Nicotine.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) in 16 patients in people with parkinson's disease.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

The publication is from 1999 (Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Therapeutic nicotine (patch, non-peptide) compound page, Parkinson's disease research.