The Nation : FDA Approves New Parkinson’s Drug

A new drug that is expected to significantly increase the quality of life for those Parkinson’s disease patients for whom standard drug therapy has begun to fail has been approved for marketing, the Food and Drug Administration announced. The new drug, selegiline, would be added to levodopa, the drug most frequently prescribed to alleviate symptoms of the degenerative central nervous system disorder, which include slowness of movement, muscular rigidity and an instability that often leads to falls. At the present time, when levodopa’s effectiveness begins to fade, the symptoms return or higher doses of levodopa are needed to suppress them, frequently with increasingly serious side effects, including severe nausea and involuntary bodily movements, flushing, palpitations and confusion. There are no known major side effects associated with selegiline, the FDA said.