The thought was so tantalizing. Medication within the GLP-1 class, which incorporates Wegovy and Ozempic, have proved miraculous in treating weight reduction and different ailments. And a few researchers hoped that the medicine might additionally assist with a few of the most tough ailments to deal with — these of the mind, like Parkinson’s.
However now, at the least for Parkinson’s, that hope appears dimmed. A rigorous research that randomly assigned Parkinson’s sufferers to take exenatide, a relative of Ozempic, confirmed completely no profit or slowing of the course of the degenerative illness after 96 weeks.
And there have been no impact on affected person signs, no impact on mind scans, no subgroup that confirmed any profit. Regardless of how the researchers sliced the information the outcomes had been the identical.
The research, printed Tuesday in The Lancet, is dangerous information for the half million People who’ve been identified with Parkinson’s illness. Signs embrace tremors, stiffness and issue with steadiness. Sufferers additionally might develop dementia. Therapies, together with drugs and deep mind stimulation, may also help with signs. However no remedy has been proven to sluggish the illness’s progress.
“It’s massively disappointing,” mentioned Dr. Thomas Foltynie of College School London, who led the trial. “We had been anticipating we’d come via and we’d get a constructive consequence.”
Parkinson’s specialists shared his sentiment.
“This can be a sobering second,” mentioned Dr. Michael S. Okun, a Parkinson’s illness knowledgeable on the College of Florida and the nationwide medical adviser for the Parkinson’s Basis. “This can be a very well performed research and it got here up empty-handed.”
The discovering might have implications for researchers who’re asking if the newer GLP-1 medicine might assist sluggish the course of Alzheimer’s or might stop the illness.
The brand new research concerned 194 individuals with Parkinson’s illness handled at six analysis hospitals within the U.Ok. The sufferers had been randomly assigned to inject themselves as soon as per week for 96 weeks with exenatide, a sort 2 diabetes remedy made by AstraZeneca and bought beneath the model title Byetta, or with a placebo. The trial was funded by Britain’s Nationwide Institute for Well being and Care Analysis with help for substudies from the charity Remedy Parkinson’s and the Van Andel Institute.
The drug is in the identical class as Ozempic and Wegovy and, like them, lowers blood sugar ranges. All are so-called GLP-1 receptor agonists, generally known as GLP-1s. Exenatide isn’t as highly effective in eliciting weight reduction because the newer medicine, however specialists say there isn’t any purpose to imagine that the newer medicine would carry out otherwise in research of mind illness.
The outcomes, researchers mentioned, are particularly disappointing as a result of there have been ideas that GLP-1 medicine may assist Parkinson’s sufferers.
GLP-1 medicine protected neurons from harm in laboratory research and in a research with rats given a mind harm like that in Parkinson’s illness.
It started to look that the outcomes may additionally apply to sufferers.
“Folks began digging into claims databases,” Dr. Okun mentioned, explaining that researchers had examined massive databases exhibiting medicine that folks took and their diagnoses. The researchers requested if sufferers who had taken GLP-1s is likely to be much less more likely to get Parkinson’s or, if that they had it, would have a illness that progressed extra slowly.
The outcomes had been promising.
They appeared at epidemiological research. They discovered that folks with diabetes who took GLP-1s had been much less more likely to have Parkinson’s.
Then two small research recommended that exenatide may sluggish the development of some Parkinson’s signs over a 12 months’s time.
Persevering with the hints of progress, a bigger however nonetheless preliminary research, printed final 12 months within the New England Journal of Medication, discovered {that a} GLP-1 that’s not available on the market — lixisenatide — appeared to barely sluggish progress of the illness over a 12 months.
Dr. Okun, on the time, mentioned that the consequence was “nibbling on the edges of illness modification.”
“What we had final 12 months was a one-year trial and a small sign,” mentioned Dr. David Standaert, a Parkinson’s researcher on the College of Alabama at Birmingham. “What would occur in the event you went longer? Nicely, that is longer and there’s simply not a lot right here.”
The issue with finding out GLP-1s in Parkinson’s illness, Dr. Standaert mentioned, is that what exenatide is meant to be doing within the mind isn’t clear.
“I wouldn’t do one other research like this except you be taught what’s the goal,” Dr. Standaert mentioned. “What’s the biochemistry you are attempting to alter within the mind? How do these medicine work, anyway?”