D-serine Adjuvant Treatment for Parkinson's Disease
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2008-05-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The proposed experiment will evaluate the effects of the NMDA receptor full agonist D-serine
(~2g/day) on persistent symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and on antiparkinsonian drugs-induced
dyskinesias.
D-serine will be used as add-on therapy to on-going medications received by Parkinson's
Disease patients. The rational for this study stems from observations made in pervious
clinical trials with schizophrenia patients, in which it was demonstrated that D-serine
adjuvant treatment resulted in:1)improvement of parkinsonian side effects induced by
antipsychotic drugs and 2) improvement of depression and negative (i.e apathy, blunted
effects, anhedonia) symptoms which are similar to symptoms encountered in Parkinson's
Disease.
The study will have a crossover design in accordance to which each patient will receive, in
random order D-serine and placebo for a 6 weeks period each. Thus, any participant will have
the opportunity to receive the experimental treatment.