[Medication treatment for Parkinson's disease]

In general, therapy for Parkinson's disease is dominated by dopamine agonists (DA) in younger patients and levodopa in older patients with comorbidities. Single or combined treatment with DA should be used as long as possible to avoid levodopa and associated complications. About 30% of our patients respond to DA monotherapy and tolerate it for quite a long time. It is important to sustain patient confidence. Although parkinsonism is an insidious disease of unknown cause resulting in destruction of important dopaminergic neurons, no other neurodegenerative disease can be treated as successfully.