Genetic Variants May Predict Response to Parkinson's Disease Treatment

Researchers in a recent study found a genetic variant that can potentially cause treatment-failure in patients with Parkinson’s disease.

Response to treatment with rasagiline for Parkinson’s disease is typically not good in the early stages of the disease, but for a previously unexplained reason, subsides over time. Researchers in the study, published in Nature Reviews Neurology, examined genetic data from 692 patients from the ADAGIO clinical trial for rasagiline.

They were able to discover 2 variants that improved responses to the medication in the early stages of the disease where treatment response is typically not good.

"Genetic studies of drug response are often based only on memory of the response rather than systematically recorded data. These findings need to be interpreted with caution, as in all studies replication is needed,” concluded senior study author Joanne Knight, PhD. “However, we hope that such studies will encourage other companies to make data from clinical trials available to researchers."