Can Parkinsons Patch Outperform Its Peers?
The Parkinson’s patch gives patients a kind of drug known as a dopamine agonist. It directly plugs in to dopamine receptors on brain cells. This doesn’t work quite as well as dopamine itself — but because these drugs have a longer half-life than L-dopa, they smooth out the on/off effect. Half-life is the time that it takes for half of the drug to be broken down by the body. “There have been several pivotal studies that show if you start patients on a dopamine agonist, you get less of these motor complications after five years,” Watts says. “The two currently leading dopamine agonists, Mirapex and Requip, are oral drugs that are shown to do that.” Unfortunately, patients on these drugs may begin to experience the on/off effect as well. It’s been thought that this happens because oral medicines can’t deliver a steady stream of the drug to the brain. The Parkinson’s patch is designed to solve this problem. It bypasses the digestive system and gives a steady supply of the drug to the brai
