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| |  Switch From Oral Dopamine Agonist to Patch Therapy Appears Simple, Well Tolerated: Presented at ANA By Ed Susman CHICAGO, IL -- October 11, 2006 -- A switch from an oral dopamine agonist to the experimental transdermal agent rotigotine can be accomplished overnight in patients with Parkinson's disease, researchers said here at the American Neurological Association (ANA) 131st Annual Meeting. "Of 119 subjects enrolled in this trial, 116 patients were successfully switched to the rotigotine patch therapy," said Katherine Widnell, MD, attending neurologist and movement disorders specialist, Aurora Sinai Medical Center, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Aurora Sinai Medical Center cares for 5,000 patients with Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders each year, he said. "In this trial, an overnight switch from ropinirole, pramipexole or cabergoline to rotigotine was safe and well tolerated, without exacerbating Parkinson's disease symptoms, and resulted in an overall improvement in mean Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) score," said Dr. Widnell, who presented the international team's work in a poster on October 10th. Ropinirole and pramipexole are commonly used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease in the United States; cabergoline is available only in Europe, Dr. Widnell said. "At my institution we had 12 patients in the study, and none of them had any problems in making the switch," she said. "We didn't need to make any dose adjustments either. In fact, in all 116 patients who made the switch, we had to make adjustments in just 12 of them." She noted that 11 of those patients required just 1 adjustment. The dose of the rotigotine patch was based on the dose of oral dopamine agonist the patient was taking at the time of the switch. For example, patients on 2 mg of ropinirole or 0.5 mg of pramipexole or 0.8 mg of cabergoline were switched to a once-daily patch of rotigotine containing 2 mg of the active drug. Dr. Widnell said 46 patients who were taking ropinirole achieved a 0.8 decrease in UPDRS scores at the end of 1 month; among the 47 patients switched from pramipexole to rotigotine there was an average 2.1-point decline in the UPDRS score and in the 21 patients on cabergoline who made the switch to the patch there was a 3.1-point decline in the UPDRS scores. Two patients did not complete the UPDRS assessment. Lower scores on the UPDRS indicate improvement in symptoms. The study was sponsored by Schwarz Pharma, Monheim, Germany, which is developing the patch and expects to have it on the market in the United States by mid-2007.
[Presentation title: Tolerability of Switching from an Oral Dopamine Agonist to Transdermal Rotigotine in Parkinson's Disease. Abstract T-13]
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