Adding a drug called entacapone to standard treatment with levodopa for people with early Parkinson’s disease appears to enhance some aspects of their quality of life, researchers report.

Entacapone, also known as Comtan, slows the breakdown of levodopa and has been shown to help Parkinson’s patients on levodopa with fluctuating symptoms, boosting motor function and increasing “on” time while reducing “off” time.

Dr. C. Warren Olanow of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York and colleagues looked at whether the drug would be helpful for people with early Parkinson’s and no motor fluctuations.

As described in the Archives of Neurology, the researchers randomly assigned 750 patients to take entacapone or placebo daily for 26 weeks. The medication was then withdrawn over a two-week period.

At the end of the trial, there was no significant difference seen between the two groups on a standard Parkinson’s disease rating scale.

However, those given entacapone showed improvement in several measures of quality of life, including mobility, activities of daily life, physical functioning and vitality.

The researchers suggest that in relatively mild Parkinson’s disease, although there is no improvement in motor score, entacapone may provide “clinical benefits that are subjective and more apparent to patients than physicians.”

Nevertheless, they conclude, “the value of these quality-of-life benefits remains unclear.”

SOURCE: Archives of Neurology, October 2004.