Treatment Patterns in Patients with Incident Parkinson's Disease in the United States.

BACKGROUND: Treatment patterns in Parkinson's disease (PD) have not been extensively studied for nearly two decades. Insurance claims are appropriate for such analysis. OBJECTIVE: To understand the standard of care use of symptomatic treatments in new cases of PD and factors associated with treatment choice. METHODS: Retrospective cohort study using claims data from the United States between 2008 and 2016. We used Kaplan-Meier methodology to estimate time to treatment start and switch or add-on therapy and Cox proportional hazards models to identify predictors. RESULTS: We identified 68,532 patients eligible for treatment pattern analyses. Median time from diagnosis until first treatment was 37 days (95% confidence interval: 36-38). Two distinct patterns of treatment initiation were identified: fast initiators and patients with delayed treatment start (or no recorded treatment). Levodopa therapies were the most commonly prescribed treatment class (52.6%). Increased age was associated with shorter time to start of treatment with levodopa. Younger age was associated with shorter time to initiation of dopamine agonists and other symptomatic treatments. Patients that initiated treatment with levodopa/combinations had the fewest switches/add-ons [30.4%; median time 7.29 (6.71, 8.13) years]. Older patients had fewer switch/add-on therapies, but only in the group that started with levodopa/combination therapy. CONCLUSIONS: Time from diagnosis to treatment start was relatively short, suggesting that PD diagnosis, as reflected in the database, is closely linked to start of symptomatic treatment. Levodopa treatment remains the most common treatment, especially for older patients. Delayed treatment start was associated with increased age and comorbidity.

Evaluation of smartphone-based testing to generate exploratory outcome measures in a phase 1 Parkinson's disease clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: Ubiquitous digital technologies such as smartphone sensors promise to fundamentally change biomedical research and treatment monitoring in neurological diseases such as PD, creating a new domain of digital biomarkers. OBJECTIVES: The present study assessed the feasibility, reliability, and validity of smartphone-based digital biomarkers of PD in a clinical trial setting. METHODS: During a 6-month, phase 1b clinical trial with 44 Parkinson participants, and an independent, 45-day study in 35 age-matched healthy controls, participants completed six daily motor active tests (sustained phonation, rest tremor, postural tremor, finger-tapping, balance, and gait), then carried the smartphone during the day (passive monitoring), enabling assessment of, for example, time spent walking and sit-to-stand transitions by gyroscopic and accelerometer data. RESULTS: Adherence was acceptable: Patients completed active testing on average 3.5 of 7 times/week. Sensor-based features showed moderate-to-excellent test-retest reliability (average intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.84). All active and passive features significantly differentiated PD from controls with P < 0.005. All active test features except sustained phonation were significantly related to corresponding International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society-Sponsored UPRDS clinical severity ratings. On passive monitoring, time spent walking had a significant (P = 0.005) relationship with average postural instability and gait disturbance scores. Of note, for all smartphone active and passive features except postural tremor, the monitoring procedure detected abnormalities even in those Parkinson participants scored as having no signs in the corresponding International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society-Sponsored UPRDS items at the site visit. CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate the feasibility of smartphone-based digital biomarkers and indicate that smartphone-sensor technologies provide reliable, valid, clinically meaningful, and highly sensitive phenotypic data in Parkinson's disease. © 2018 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.