Parkinson’s disease leads to shaking, stiffness, and problems with walking and overall movement. Symptoms of Parkinson’s start slowly, the first signs include hands shaking and slow movement. Treatment for Parkinson's disease includes drugs to help with symptoms. However, over time as the disease gets worse these drugs may fail to control symptoms at all times of the day. One drug, prescribed by a GP to help people with Parkinson’s disease when other treatments are not working is called apomorphine.
We will use GP prescription data to describe the dose and duration of apomorphine use to understand how it is used to help people with Parkinson’s disease. By looking at the dose and duration of apomorphine, we will know if further research we would like to do is possible. Our further research would investigate how the relationship between the dose and duration of apomorphine relates to; how long a person has had Parkinson’s disease, other health conditions they have which might affect the drugs they receive, and the drugs they have after apomorphine.
Parkinson’s disease is the second most frequent neurodegenerative disease, affecting an estimated 1% of people aged over 60 years and around 3% in older age groups. Parkinson’s disease is associated with debilitating motor and non-motor symptoms. In the advanced phase of the disease, people may experience severe motor symptoms despite optimized pharmacological therapy. Apomorphine is a fast-acting dopamine agonist often prescribed, in combination with levodopa, during “off” periods i.e., when other pharmacological therapies are not controlling motor symptoms.
This descriptive feasibility study aims to use CPRD Aurum data to describe the distribution of prescribed daily dose for apomorphine sub-cutaneous injections as well as the duration of persistent apomorphine sub-cutaneous injection use among individuals with Parkinson’s disease. We seek to use these results to determine whether daily dose and duration are; sufficiently captured in the data, provide a large enough sample size when stratified, and vary substantially enough for a full study to investigate the relationship between daily dose / duration and 1) length of time between Parkinson’s disease onset and first prescription of apomorphine sub-cutaneous injection, 2) different comorbid conditions, and 3) other Parkinson’s treatment provision post-apomorphine use.
Apomorphine sub-cutaneous injections daily dose; Apomorphine sub-cutaneous injections duration of use
Jennifer Davidson - Chief Investigator - Health iQ Ltd ( UK ) t/a CorEvitas
Jennifer Davidson - Corresponding Applicant - Health iQ Ltd ( UK ) t/a CorEvitas
Boglarka Kovacs - Collaborator - Health iQ Ltd ( UK ) t/a CorEvitas