DA agonists - Non-Ergot derivaties: Apomorphine

• Book ID: 102506019
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 83 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-3185
• DOI: 10.1002/mds.5567

✦ Synopsis

In de novo patients with early parkinsonism, acute subcutaneous challenges with apomorphine monotherapy have been proposed to test the dopaminergic responsiveness of the motor symptoms in order to help clinicians in differential diagnosis between "idiopathic" Parkinson's disease and other parkinsonian syndromes 4 . However, in early PD the sensitivity and specificity of this test is low and remains debated. There is no long-term, randomized controlled trial for subcutaneous apomorphine in PD, and the only present therapeutic indication for subcutaneous apomorphine is to help control severe "on/off" oscillations in L-dopatreated patients who have received other oral treatments (eg. DA agonists, MAO-B inhibitors, COMT inhibitors) without sufficient improvement. Consequently no study qualifying for this indication was identified.