that's me, diagnosed at 48, now 61. bottom line, pd sucks, is difficult and expensive to treat as we get older, the fact that with the advent of l-dopa we no longer die from pd much sooner - we do suffer though - and of course l-dopa, agonists and dbs put a damper for awhile on developing new drugs since the drugs/treatments have to be better than the current treatments or fill a needed niche and those are high barriers. as an aside, the need for continuous delivery l-dopa was recognized in the 80's which is why CR was developed but seems a daunting task to develop a really good CR!! and that pd is perceived to be the most easily curable of the most common CNS diseases likely put a damper on drug research. so we have neupro patch, extended release oral agonists, rytary, a new and maybe not a whole lot better IR/CR C/L combo, we may have inhaled rescue L-DOPA, we may have a sublingual rescue apomorphine, both of which i could benefit from by not having to take too much C/L to make sure i don't go OFF when out and about and a quick rescue if i do, there is continuous delivery DUOPA, a continuous delivery pump in phase 3 testing from nuoderm and some other drugs in development plus more intelligent DBS which can change it's setting on the fly plus all the disease modifying gene therapy, stem cell, transplant research. suffice it to say that side affects from l-dopa go way down with continuous delivery, implying that it's the pd progression that elicits the l-dopa side affects, not the l-dopa. in fact, when DUOPA is discontinued, the benefit of the reduced side affects continues for awhile.

kind of rambling here but very difficult to fix many parts of the brain simultaneously, how do you get different drugs to different parts of the brain thru a semipermiable bbb? so researchers of course develop drugs that will help the most people.

as far as advanced pd'ers not satisfied with current meds, i agree. i think part of that is an unmet need and another part is neuros/mds's don't have the time and maybe the expertise to tweak drug regimes to get the best symptom relief, maybe it's because were're all different, maybe because there aren't enough of those professionals, maybe because many of us can't afford the new drugs. finally, a lot of money is going towards biomarkers, early detection, basic research since theoretically society benefits more from stopping pd from progressing in young people rather than trying to cure it in advanced pd'ers? dunno.

if you're pretty sure there's going to be a "cure" in the next 5 years, take the drugs which are best for you, which is often l-dopa. that was my thinking when first diagnosed, plus couldn't tolerate agonists.