The idea was so tempting. The drugs in the GLP-1 class, which include Wegovy and Ozempic, have shown themselves miraculous in the treatment of weight loss and other diseases. And some researchers hoped that the drugs could also help with some of the most difficult diseases to treat: those of the brain, such as Parkinson’s ones.
But now, at least for Parkinson’s, that hope seems attenuated. A rigorous study that randomly assigned Parkinson’s patients to take Exenatide, a relative of Ozimpic, has not shown absolutely any benefit or slowdown in the course of the degenerative disease after 96 weeks.
And there has been no effect on the patient’s symptoms, no effect on brain scans, no subgroup that showed any benefit. It doesn’t matter how the researchers cut the data, the results were the same.
The study, published on Tuesday on Lancet, is bad news for the half million Americans to whom Parkinson’s disease was diagnosed. Symptoms include tremors, rigidity and difficulty with balance. Patients can also develop dementia. The treatments, including drugs and deep brain stimulation, can help with symptoms. But it has not been shown that no treatment slows down the progress of the disease.
“It’s extremely disappointing,” said Dr. Thomas Foltynie of the University College London, who guided the process. “We expected we would arrive and we would get a positive result.”
Parkinson’s experts shared his feeling.
“This is a moment that makes you think,” said Dr. Michael S. Okun, an expert in Parkinson’s diseases at the University of Florida and the National Medical Adviser for the Parkinson’s Foundation. “This is a really well done study and has come empty -handed.”
The discovery can have implications for researchers who ask if the new GLP-1 drugs can help slow down the Alzheimer’s course or could prevent disease.
The new study involved 194 people with Parkinson’s disease treated in six research hospitals in the United Kingdom, patients were randomly assigned to inject themselves once a week for 96 weeks with exenatide, a type 2 diabetes treatment made by Astrazeneca and sold with the byetta brand, or with a placebo. The process was financed by the National Institute for Health and Care Research of Great Britain with support for the subordinates by The Charity Cure Parkinsonon and the Van Andel Institute.
The drug is in the same class as Ozempic and Wegovy and, like them, lowers blood sugar levels. All are the so-called competitives of the GLP-1 receptor, commonly called GLP-1. The exenatide is not so powerful in the helix for weight loss as the new drugs, but experts say that there is no reason to believe that the most recent drugs will perform differently in the studies on cerebral diseases.
The results, the researchers said, are particularly disappointing because there were suggestions that GLP-1 drugs could help Parkinson’s patients.
GLP-1 drugs protected neurons from damage to laboratory studies and in a study with rats administered a brain injury such as that in Parkinson’s disease.
He started seeming that the results could also be applied to patients.
“People began to dig in the databases of the statements,” said dr. Okun, explaining that the researchers had examined large databases showing drugs that people took and their diagnosis. The researchers asked if the patients who had assumed GLP-1 could have been less likely to obtain Parkinson’s or, if they had, they would have had a disease that progressed more slowly.
The results were promising.
They examined the epidemiological studies. They found that people with diabetes who took GLP-1 were less likely to have Parkinson’s.
So two small studies have suggested that Exenatide could slow down the progression of the symptoms of a few years of Parkinson’s.
Continuing the suggestions of progress, a wider but still preliminary study, published last year on the New England Journal of Medicine, found that a GLP-1 that is no longer on the market-lixisenatid-sealing a slightly slowed progress of the disease compared to year.
Dr. Okun, at the time, said that the result was “gnawing at the edges of the change of illness”.
“What we had last year was a one year and a small signal process,” said dr. David Standaert, a parkinson researcher at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. “What would happen if I went longer? Well, this is longer and there is not much here. “
The problem with the study of GLP-1 in Parkinson’s disease said dr. Standaert, is that what exenatide should do in the brain is not clear.
“I would not do another study like this unless you learn what the goal is,” said dr. Standaert. “What is the biochemistry you are trying to change in the brain? How do these drugs work, however? “