teaser
Lundbeck partner Teva Phamaceuticals Industries Ltd (Teva) today announced that results from the ADAGIO trial, published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrated that Parkinson’s disease patients receiving Azilect (rasagiline) 1mg/day at the start of the study (early-start group) experienced superior benefit over 18 months compared with those who started the exact same treatment nine months later (delayed-start group). This finding is consistent with a possible disease-modifying effect for Azilect 1 mg/day.
Professor C Warren Olanow, Department of Neurology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York and co-principal investigator of the ADAGIO study, commented: “A therapy that slows or stops disease progression is the greatest unmet need in the treatment of patients with Parkinson’s disease. Current therapies do not prevent the development of disability in such patients. The results of the ADAGIO study provide support for the possibility that early treatment with Azilect 1 mg/day may slow the development of disability.”
Azilect is the first Parkinson’s disease treatment to succeed in a prospective delayed-start study, a trial design specifically developed to test for the possibility of a disease-modifying effect.
Professor Olivier Rascol, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital, Toulouse, France and ADAGIO co-principal investigator, stated: “The results of the ADAGIO study provide novel data to support the use of Azilect 1 mg daily as initial treatment of patients with Parkinson’s disease. The ADAGIO study, which utilised a novel trial design with three primary endpoints, suggests that the drug has a positive impact on slowing the progression of patients’ disability, beyond its already known symptomatic benefit.”
