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I received an error message on my first posting. Forgive me if this gets posted twice. I read the abstract and an editorial on thee selegiline study in the Dec. 16 1995 issue of the British Medical Journal. I was pretty confused by the results and would like to hear what others think. You can access portions of this journal on the Internet at http://www.bmj.com/bmj/index.html The complete article is not available on-line, only the abstract, and the editorial. How much weight do you think this study should be given? As someone else said, it is probably only a matter of time, that another article will appear refuting these results, but it does raise some serious doubts. Over 500 patients from 93 different hospitals in the United Kingdom with early PD were studied over 5 years. One group was taking only levodopa, the second group was on levodopa and selegiline (eldepryl). The mortaality rate of the selegiline group was almost 60% higher than the levodopa only group. No information was given on the number of deaths, the ages of the patients who died, or the causes of death. How can we evaluate these findings? Also the study conclued that the use of selegeline with levodopa "seemed to confer no clinical benefit." Yet it also reported that "During the trial the dose of levodopa required to produce optimum motor controll steadily increased in arm 1 (levodopa only group) (median daily dose 375 mg at 1 year and 625 mg at 4 years), but the median dose in arm 2 (levodopa and selegiline) did not change (375 mg)." Isn't this a clinical benefit? The editorial came out strongly against the use of selegiline and called for more studies to determine if long term use is causually related to the in- creased mortality reported in the study. For those of us presently taking eldepryl, what do you think we should do in the meantime? Linda Herman [log in to unmask]