Parkinson’s Disease Drug Proves Effective against ALS in Japan Research

[Richard]

Parkinson’s Disease Drug Proves Effective Against ALS in Japan Research

 

A Parkinson’s disease drug (ropinirole hydrochloride extended-release tablets (marketed as ReQuip CR Tablets)) has been confirmed effective in treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Experiments reportedly confirmed the drug was two to three times more potent than existing ALS drugs in improving disease conditions, and claim it is believed to be effective in about 70% of ALS patients.

Hype, hoax or hope?

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20210521/p2a/00m/0sc/046000c

Richard

 

[Jean-Pierre Le Rouzic]

Thanks Richard,

Actually there were several publications since 2018 and an ongoing phase I/II clinical trial of Ropinorol against ALS.
This was reported in Alsnewstoday at the time.

It belongs to the same class of drugs as Dexpramipexole which attracted some interest from ALS scientists since 2003, when then found that Pramipexole, a Parkinson drug had some benefit to ALS patients. Then in 2008 it was found that a R+Pramipexole trial resulted in 17 % reduction in slope of decline of ALSFRS-R, which was qualified as “non significant”.
Side effects specific to D3 agonists such as ropinirole and pramipexole can include hallucinations, hypersexuality and compulsive gambling, even in patients without a history of these behaviours.

There are a few pALS that take Ropinorole informally, as far I know they do not report some extraordinary news except extraordinary constipation!

[Richard]

Very interesting for what you are saying!  Sorry to see this drug has been under consideration since 2008.  Disappointing that things move so slowly and the drug does not show much promise.  I guess you answered my question, it’s “hype”.

 

Richard

[Jean-Pierre Le Rouzic]

Thanks, but it is since 2018, not 2008.
There is certainly hype in those kind of articles coming from university PR department, but I wonder if in ALS trials (as in Healey platform) they tried a combo of all drugs that “just” slow the disease, perhaps we would get better results than with only one drug at a time.
We know now that there are several drugs that slow ALS progression, if only a bit or if only in a subset of pALS. D3 (Dopamine) agonists are a member of this list.

And personally I think that if a doctor –not a biologist– would take the time to look at the drugs that work (if only a little) surely something interesting could be inferred about ALS etiology.

[Richard]

Thanks for the date correction!

 

I understand about the hype of articles coming from university PR departments.  I usually skip ALS articles from financial websites because I feel the financial institutions just want people to invest into that particular company or business.

 

That would be interesting to see if a combination of drugs that slowed progression would be better than one at a time. Hoping that someone is looking into that.

 

Thanks,

Rich

 

[Jim]

Just posted an article on Requip, see topic on Requip has already been discussed, Hopefully won’t be posted twice! All the Best

[Jean-Pierre Le Rouzic]

I hope Ropinorole will be proved useful, but no other team had made publications about Ropinorole.

A basic assumption in research about any result is that it should be replicated by other labs.

Unfortunately no effort is made to replicate many scientific publications about ALS. This is why we have bizarre solitary drug proposals that pop up constantly and are forgotten quickly. The most bizarre recently was NU-9 but Cu-ATSM seems to be in the same UFO league.

Something weird is this clinical trial about Ropinorole that they discuss in the press release, seems to not have been registered on clinicaltrials.gov while a drug which is claimed to have been found efficacious in ALS by the same research team (bosutinib) is in clinical trial (NCT04744532).

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