5. Conclusions and Future Directions
PD
EVENT, HOLIDAY
The current authors [As a first-of-its-kind, the current study is limited by its relatively small sample size. As experience with DIt is also important to address the one subject who had a profound positive response to levodopa. Subject 8 previously had been essentially unresponsive to all treatment for years, suggesting it was not a random event. The dramatic improvement during the levodopa week might represent a re-sensitization to levodopa after a three-year “drug holiday”, but this seems unlikely since there was no effect when the family resumed levodopa. Although highly speculative, another hypothesis is that the two-day PF-2562 period “primed” dopamine circuitry (e.g., by improving sleep structure) to respond more normally to even small amounts of dopamine from a levodopa challenge six days later. Coupled with the very consistent beneficial responses of the other four patients, the hypothesis is a high priority for further testing, as there will be a growing number of LsPD patients with better palliative care strategies, which may increase the life-span, but not the health span of PD patients.We have noted the limitations of this study above, but it is important to put them in context. There was no prior experience in the literature for interventional studies in LsPD. Thus, necessarily, the design [