Drug-induced Parkinson's, part 2.This summer, researchers from Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University. It is a prestigious American medical school located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. , Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard School of Public Health is (colloquially, HSPH) is one of the professional graduate schools of Harvard University. Located in Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill, next to Harvard Medical School and Cambridge, Massachusetts, , and Brigham and Women's Hospital Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) is a hospital in the Longwood Area of the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Mission Hill. With Massachusetts General Hospital, it is one of the two founding members of Partners HealthCare. , all in Boston, warned that the tranquilizers some elderly people take to control dementia, anxiety, and other problems can produce misleading side effects. Tremors and a slow, stiff gait, for example, have deceived physicians into treating the patients for Parkinson's disease (SN: 7/5/95, p. 86). "There's a real tendency to misinterpret mis·in·ter·pret tr.v. mis·in·ter·pret·ed, mis·in·ter·pret·ing, mis·in·ter·prets 1. To interpret inaccurately. 2. To explain inaccurately. disease in the elderly," says Jerry Avorn of Brigham and Women's Hospital. Avorn and his colleagues are now raising the same alarm about the drug metoclopramide, which many elderly people take to treat nausea and digestive tract problems. The drug's ability to create symptoms mimicking Parkinson's is well documented, he says, but no one had examined whether metoclopramide generated misdiagnoses among the elderly. In their new study, reported in the Dec. 13, 1995 Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association is an international peer-reviewed general medical journal, published 48 times per year by the American Medical Association. JAMA is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world. , the researchers looked at the medical records of almost 20,000 people age 65 or older to see if they had ever taken metoclopramide. Around 3,500 had recently begun treatments with an anti-Parkinson's drug. The other people had never taken drugs for Parkinson's. The investigators found that the percentage of elderly people taking metoclopramide was much higher in the group being treated for Parkinson's than in the control group, suggesting that physicians frequently misdiagnose mis·di·ag·nose tr.v. mis·di·ag·nosed, mis·di·ag·nos·ing, mis·di·ag·nos·es To diagnose incorrectly. older patients. Avorn and his colleagues concluded from the data that an elderly person taking metoclopramide was three times more likely to be prescribed an additional drug to treat Parkinson's disease than was a person who did not take the digestive drug. In a statement released by the National Institute on Aging The National Institute on Aging is a division of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda, Maryland. Formed in 1974, NIA's mission is to improve the health and well-being of older Americans through research. It is the primary U.S. in Bethesda, Md., Stanley L. Slater, deputy associate director of the institute's geriatric program, commented, "The study results are disturbing because metoclopramide is a widely prescribed drug. Its use may have resulted in people being needlessly treated with costly and possibly toxic antiparkinsonian medications for a disease they don't have." |
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