Motor and cognitive advantages persist 12 months after exenatide exposure in Parkinson's disease

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Exenatide in the context of parkinson's disease in this randomized controlled trial publication.

Continued follow up of these same patients was performed to investigate whether these possible advantages persisted in the prolonged absence of this medication.

Who Took Part

The study group was 20 individuals.

The age groups tagged for this paper are middle-aged adults.

All participants from an open label, randomised controlled trial of exenatide as a treatment for Parkinson's disease, were invited for a further follow up assessment at the UCL Institute of Neurology.

Motor severity of PD was compared after overnight withdrawal of conventional PD medication using blinded video assessment of the MDS-UPDRS, together with several non-motor tests.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized and open-label study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Exenatide and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Everyone knew when Exenatide was being given (open label), which is simpler to run but leaves more room for expectations to affect what is reported.

This assessment was thus 24 months after their original baseline visit, i.e. 12 months after cessation of exenatide.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Antiparkinson Agents, Cognition, Exenatide, Parkinson Disease, Peptides and Venoms.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Parkinson's disease, UPDRS, clinical trial, diabetes mellitus and disease modifying treatment.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and open-label study of Exenatide in 20 individuals 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.

Results are reported in around 3 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2014 (Journal of Parkinson's disease), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Exenatide compound page, Parkinson's disease research.