An antibody called Prasinezumab has been shown to be able to reduce signs of motor deterioration in people with Parkinson's who have a rapid progression of the disease. The finding is from a large phase 2 clinical trial — a test carried out on humans to evaluate the effectiveness of a certain medicine or component — published in Nature Medicine this Monday (15).
Parkinson's is a progressive disease of the nervous system that mainly affects the patient's movements, leading to difficulty walking and speaking, in addition to loss of balance, hand tremors and muscle stiffness. In the disorder, motor and non-motor symptoms worsen over time and, currently, there are no treatments for the disease.
According to previous studies, one of the factors for the progression of Parkinson's is the aggregation of alpha-synuclein, a type of protein, in the brain. Prasinezumab is the first experimental therapeutic monoclonal antibody that was designed to bind to aggregated alpha-synuclein, allowing its disaggregation.
In the phase 2 study, 316 patients with early-stage Parkinson's received the antibody. The researchers then analyzed the potential effects of prasinezumab on the progression of motor symptoms of the disease in four subpopulations that had rapidly progressing motor symptoms.
These four subgroups were defined by factors such as the use of monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) inhibitors, disease staging on the Hoehn and Yahr scale, the presence of rapid REM sleep behavior disorder or the presence of diffuse malignant phenotypes.
The researchers found that prasinezumab treatment reduced the worsening of motor symptoms in all rapidly progressing Parkinson's subgroups after 52 weeks, compared with motor symptoms in those who were treated with placebo. However, this same effect was not observed in subpopulations with slow disease progression.
To define which participants had a slow progression of the disease and which had a faster progression, the researchers used part III of the Brazilian Movement Disorders Society's Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), which is the tool standard clinical assessment method to quantify motor symptoms of Parkinson's.
Study findings suggest that clinical efficacy of prasinezumab may be seen within a year in patients with rapidly progressing Parkinson's. More research is needed to determine whether the antibody may be effective in patients with slower disease progression after longer periods of treatment.
Further studies are also needed to confirm these effects in patients with rapidly progressing Parkinson's.
Source: CNN Brasil
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