Camicinal: reduces gastric emptying time

Most PwP will during their time with PD be prescribed with levodopa in one form or another. How the drug gets from the pill to the brain is very important. We focus here on the time it takes to get from the stomach to the upper intestines from where it can begin to be absorbed.

Marrinan et al. write [1]:

"Delayed gastric emptying may impair L-dopa absorption, contributing to motor fluctuations. We evaluated the effect of camicinal (GSK962040), a gastroprokinetic, on the absorption of L-dopa and symptoms of PD."

"Phase II, double blind, placebo controlled trial. Participants were randomized to receive camicinal 50mg once daily (n=38) or placebo (n=20) for 7 to 9 days."

"Camicinal resulted in significant reduction in OFF time (-2.31 hours ...), significant increase in ON time (+1.88 hours ...) per day, and significant decrease in mean total MD UPDRS score (-12.5 ...)."

Camicinal is a motilin receptor agonist, so it would be interesting to know the effect that motilin itself has on levodopa absorption.

Reference:

[1] "A randomized, double blind, placebo controlled trial of camicinal in Parkinson's disease"
Sarah L. Marrinan, MBBS, FRCP, MD, 1 , 2 Tal Otiker, MSc, 3 Lakshmi S. Vasist, PharmD, 4 Rachel A. Gibson, PhD, 3 Bhopinder K. Sarai, BSc (Hons), 5 Matthew E. Barton, PhD, 4 Duncan B. Richards, BM, BCh, DM, FRCP, 5 Per M. Hellström, MD, PhD, 6 Dag Nyholm, MD, PhD, 7 George E. Dukes, PharmD, 4 and David J. Burn, MD
Mov Disord, Feb 2018
A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial of camicinal in Parkinson's disease

John