In 1817, James Parkinson expressed a hope about the disease that is named after him. He thought that at some point there would be a discovery and “the progress of the disease may be stopped.”
Now, nearly 200 years since Parkinson expressed his hope, and after four decades of unsuccessful clinical trials, a group of French researchers reports the first glimmer of success — a modest slowing of the disease in a one-year study.
And the drug they used? A so-called GLP-1 receptor agonist, similar to the wildly popular drugs Ozempic, for diabetes, and Wegovy, for obesity.
As many as half a million Americans have been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative brain illness second only to Alzheimer’s in prevalence.
Symptoms include tremors, slowness and stiffness, and difficulty with balance. That can lead to difficulty walking, talking and swallowing. Many patients develop dementia.
But there are drugs and treatments, like deep brain stimulation, that help, said Dr. David Standaert, a Parkinson’s expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
