Mayo Clinics' take on Levodopa

[pdpatient]

Read the article here :

mayoclinicproceedings.org/a...

[Cagey84]

An excellent article, thanks for sharing

[Fed1000]

Excellent.

[EllCee]

This article is a "review paper," basically an opinion piece with references, not a study. It did pass peer review by the journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The author, J. Eric Ahiskog, wrote a book in 2015, The New Parkinson's Disease Treatment Book: Partnering With Your Doctor to Get the Most From Your Medications.

He's very, very pro-Levadopa, so he makes light of some unpleasant side effects of long-term C/L treatment: levodopa induced dyskinesia, and hallucinations among others, in an effort to mow down every single objection a patient or clinician might have. He also advocates for C/L management by general practitioners instead of neurologists and movement disorder specialists.

He assumes all PD is Lewy Body PD, whereas the consensus is that 1/3 of PD patients without dementia have no Lewy bodies present. See pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/363... If non-LB PD were considered, would he have a different opinion?

Perhaps the most controversial allegation he makes is that C/L's bad reputation is a result of drug companies' active campaign against it so they can sell alternatives that (he says) aren't as effective, and are more expensive. Bashing Big Pharma always wins friends, but a more enlightened approach would be to say that drug strategies are highly individual and should be approached as a partnership between the patient and his or her medical professional.

An interesting read, thanks for posting it.

[eschneid]

Great refresher....anyone Involved with PD, whether a PWP or a caretaker should understand these myths about Levadopa if they want all options for the best QOL Let's hope Dr. Ahlskog is wrong about all PD cases being Lewy body PD.

Eric