Host: The Japanese Pharmacological Society
Name : The 96th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Pharmacological Society
Number : 96
Location : [in Japanese]
Date : November 30, 2022 - December 03, 2022
Parkinson's disease is one of the neurodegenerative disorders, it is pathologically characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons and accumulation of α-synuclein. The treatment of diseases can be broadly classified into causal and symptomatic therapies. All the drugs currently on the market for Parkinson's disease are used for symptomatic treatments. Levodopa, a dopamine precursor, is the mainstay of treatment for Parkinson's disease to correct the malfunction of basal ganglia circuits caused by dopamine deficiency in the brain. In addition, dopamine agonists, anticholinergics, COMT inhibitors, MAO-B inhibitors and other drugs have been marketed. In clinical trials, the efficacy of these medications was mainly evaluated using Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale and symptom diaries which were somewhat subjective methods. Evaluation using medical devices has been attempted, but is not yet common. With regard to the disease-modifying drugs, anti-α-synuclein antibodies, GLP-1 agonists, and kinase inhibitors have been examined in clinical trials. However, no drug has been obviously demonstrated to inhibit the progression of Parkinson's disease to date. It is more difficult to demonstrate clinical efficacy of disease-modifying drugs than symptomatic drugs, because there is no useful biomarker to quantify the degree of neuronal degeneration in clinical practice. In addition, the difficulty of using placebos for long periods in a clinical trial also makes proper assessment difficult.
