Long-Term Efficacy and Safety of Zonisamide for Treatment of Parkinsonism in Patients with Dementia with Lewy Bodies: An Open-label Extension of a Phase 3 Randomized Controlled Trial

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer's disease, is characterized by progressive cognitive impairment with core clinical features such as fluctuating cognition, visual hallucinations, rapid eye movement-sleep behavior disorder (RBD), and parkinsonism (1, 2). It also presents neuropsychiatric symptoms (3), which may negatively affect patients and/or their caregivers (4-6). Pathological similarities between DLB and Parkinson's disease (PD), notably the appearance of abundant Lewy bodies, mainly composed of alpha-synuclein, in the brain and autonomic nervous system, indicate that both disorders are part of the same disease spectrum (7, 8).

Source: The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry - July 9, 2021 Category: Geriatrics Authors: Toshinari Odawara, Kazuko Hasegawa, Ritsuko Kajiwara, Hisao Takeuchi, Masaaki Tagawa, Kenji Kosaka, Miho Murata Tags: Regular Research Article Source Type: research