Brain: The commonly used diabetes drug Essena peptide may be expected to help prevent or treat Parkinson's disease

3, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Brain, scientists from University College London and others found that drugs to treat type 2 diabetes may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease in patients. In the paper, researchers tested a drug called exenatide, which could be used as a potential treatment for Parkinson's disease in upcoming clinical trials, and the results support the redirection of diabetes drugs to treat Parkinson's disease. In the
study, researchers analyzed the medical records of 100,288 people with type 2 diabetes from the Health Improvement Network database, and said people with type 2 diabetes were often at increased risk of Parkinson's disease compared to those who did not have type 2 diabetes, but the common therapeutic drugs: GLP-1 agonists and DPP4 inhibitors, did not appear to reverse the increased risk of Parkinson's disease.
Photo Source: Wikipedia researchers found that patients who ate both GLP-1 agonists (e.g., DPP4 inhibitors) and two types of diabetes drugs may seem less likely to be diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in the next few years (with an average follow-up time of 3.3 years), while patients who take GLP-1 agonists are 60 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease.
The study further confirms the results of the treatment of Patients with Parkinson's disease in Phase 3 clinical trials, and researchers will then recruit 200 patients with Parkinson's disease in the UK to conduct further trials, after previous studies suggested that Parkinson's patients who were injected with Essenalutide once a week may perform better in exercise testing than those who injected placebos.
study reinforces the link between type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease, although researchers now know that most people with diabetes do not develop Parkinson's disease, said Foltynie, a researcher at the University of California, California.
The researchers also added evidence that the drug Essena peptide may help prevent or treat Parkinson's disease by affecting the course of the patient's disease rather than simply alleviating the patient's symptoms, which, of course, may require more clinical trials by later scientists.
finally, clinicians may need to consider other risk factors for Parkinson's disease when giving drugs to people with type 2 diabetes, but more research is needed later to confirm its clinical application value, the researchers said.
() Original source: Ruth Brauer, Li Wei, Tiantian Ma, et al. Diabetes and risk of Parkinson's disease: a cohort study of patients with diabetes, Brain (2020). DOI: 10.1093/brain/awaa262