you have unintentionally made it seem like this piece, critical of the rasagiline trial results, was a research study from the New England Journal of Medicine.

In fact, the ORIGINAL STUDY is what was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Olanow et al published the actual study in the NEJM and from what I've read Olanow is cautiously excited about the results of the study.

http://www.pharmatimes.com/ClinicalN....aspx?id=16640

"The finding that early treatment with rasagiline 1mg per day provides benefits that cannot be achieved with later administration of the same drug indicates that these benefits are not simply due to a symptomatic effect of the drug and are consistent with the possibility that the drug is disease-modifying,” Dr Olanow commented.

“If this can be confirmed, this would be the first drug determined to have a disease-modifying effect in PD, and that is exciting news for the PD community.”

Your piece in the original post is NOT written by Olanow and was NOT published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

I don't know who wrote it, because I can't get the link to work, but it sounds like someone disgruntled and with an axe to grind.

Cal

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I hate to rain on the media parade about this, but we began taking azilect as soon as it became available here in the US. We have not only progressed, but have progressed much faster than expected. We have taken Azilect faithfully, daily, for years now.

We continue to be amazed at how liberal our press is in making statements like the ones plastered all over the internet about this med. Some articles don't even hedge things, they come right out and say Azilect IS neuroprotective and slows progression-ha! And these oh-so-favorable press releases only run the stock price of the manufacturer higher and higher...

Our neuro was skeptical when Azilect came out because the exact same thing happened when Mirapex came out. It was heralded as "the" thing, disease-modifying...alas, ten plus years later, they had to admit it had no such effect. But in the meantime, a lot of folks made a lot of money off their stock in the company. Hate to be cynical, just have first-hand experience with this med, from the get-go.

I may be wrong, but I think this "critique" comes from the self-described PD expert at ******* (never could figure out what this person's qualifications are). I think the person who runs this web site used to post here under several different names.

http://************/parkinsons.disease/news.htm

I did not interpret Imad's criticism as coming from the NEJM- I saw the post as two separate parts: the link to the actual article (thought it was just broken link) and the criticism which I thought was written by Imad. I just realized that the link is broken because it was copy/pasted and not added as HTML link through the forum editor. To further confuse...

Hope this helps.

Laura

Interestingly, this link, although it appears correct when editing, posts as this and the link is broken. I suspect that this is code an intentional block either by the forum administration or by the person who runs the site. This person has been banned from Wikipedia and other sites for vandalizing; I think he was known in these parts as Daffy Duck. From what I understand, he tries to use multiple IPS addresses to gain entry into sites that ban him.

Anyway, as a work around, if you're curious google v i a r t i s and go to the news page.

I apologise for publishing what seems to be a deceptive research.
if you google "The effect of rasagiline on parkinson's disease " you will come by the article (second link) . I realize now it is a misinterpretation of the original article ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19776408 )
(A double-blind, delayed-start trial of rasagiline in Parkinson's disease.)
so sorry. realize now how important to check material before publishing.
Imad