Exenatide once weekly versus placebo in Parkinson's disease: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Exenatide in the context of parkinson's disease, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Exenatide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist, has neuroprotective effects in preclinical models of Parkinson's disease.

The researchers investigated whether these effects would be apparent in a clinical trial.

Who Took Part

PubMed indexes the participants as adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

Eligible patients were aged 25-75 years, had idiopathic Parkinson's disease as measured by Queen Square Brain Bank criteria, were on dopaminergic treatment with wearing-off effects, and were at Hoehn and Yahr stage 2·5 or less when on treatment.

Patients and investigators were masked to treatment allocation.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

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

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Exenatide.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Exenatide could be set against what happens without it.

Randomisation was by web-based randomisation with a two strata block design according to disease severity.

The primary outcome was the adjusted difference in the Movement Disorders Society Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) motor subscale (part 3) in the practically defined off-medication state at 60 weeks.

The study is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01971242) and is completed.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Exenatide, Neurologic Examination, Parkinson Disease, Peptides and Venoms.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Exenatide in people with parkinson's disease.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2017 (Lancet (London, England)), a journal based in England.

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