In more advanced cases of PD, what we’d really like is for the dopamine to hang around for a bit longer, or for more of it to get to the brain. So one of our strategies to do that, is to give people an enzyme blocking drug that works in the gut, to stop the dopamine from being broken down there – allowing more to get to the brain in a delivered fashion where its at a stable level.
And the treatment we use to do this is called a Catechol Methyl Transphase inhibitor. It’s a long word and the drug name is Entacapone. And you can find Entacapone combined with Levodopin in a preparation that’s available here, called Stalevo. And what that drug does is that it combines both the Levodopa, the active dopamine replacement with a drug that slows the breakdown of the breakdown of the Levodopa in the gut, allowing more to get to the brain and hopefully smooth out the delivery of the drug so the patients can get relief, especially when their disease is a bit more advanced.
