
122| Parkinson’s Disease – A Conversation With Dr. Sara Schaefer
Navigating Neuropsychology
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The Importance of Carbidopa in Treatment for Parkinson's Disease
The standard first line treatment for PD is levodopa, which is a prodrug that crosses the blood brain barrier and gets converted into dopamine to help compensate for the loss of the dopaminergic nigrostriatal innervation. Levodopa on its own produces GI side effects like nausea and vomiting. So it's combined with carbidopa to reduce those side effects, producing our well known carbidopa levodopa combo. And then there are classic problems like dyskinesia, motor fluctuations and the on-off phenomena.
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