WEMove: Long-term Experience with Duodenal Levodopa for Advance Parkinson’s Disease
 

Subject: Long-term Experience with Duodenal Levodopa for Advance Parkinson’s Disease (MDS 2008)

Date: 7/11/2008
http://www.mdvu.org/emove/article.asp?ID=1071

E-MOVE reports from the 12th International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, sponsored by the Movement Disorders Society and held in Chicago June 22-26, 2008. Abstract numbers and pages refer to abstracts published in Movement Disorders 2008;23(suppl 1).


Duodenal delivery of levodopa (Duodopa®) is a valuable treatment option in advanced Parkinson’s disease, according to a series of studies presented at the Movement Disorders meeting. In this therapy, levodopa/carbidopa is held in a reservoir that the patient carries around like a purse, and is delivered via a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube through the patient’s abdomen into the small intestine. A key advance over earlier attempts with this therapy was the development of a gel formulation, allowing the same amount of drug to be delivered in a much smaller volume of solution, making the reservoir smaller and less cumbersome to transport.

Duodopa is typically used in patients who have developed motor fluctuations and dyskinesias that can no longer be managed by adjusting oral medications, and who are not candidates for deep brain surgery, such as those with cognitive impairment, or who elect not to undergo surgery. Continuous delivery, versus the pulsatile delivery from oral medications, offers the potential benefit of smoothing out dopamine concentrations in the brain to provide more tonic stimulation, mimicking the brain’s own regulation of dopamine release. Although no comparative figures were offered at the meeting, Duodopa is expensive, and is likely to cost more over the long term that DBS, according to some researchers E-MOVE spoke with.

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Is this still in trial or approved
 

I couldn't find it in my pharmacy list of meds. Thanks