Pergolide Increases Valve Disease Risk in Parkinson's

Increased risk dose dependent, finding suggest

MONDAY, Dec. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Treating patients with Parkinson's disease with pergolide, a dopamine receptor agonist, increases the risk of moderate to severe heart valve disease in a dose-dependent manner, researchers report in the December issue of the Archives of Neurology.

Jean-Christophe Corvol, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues from Hopital de la Pitie-Salpetriere in Paris, France, used echocardiography to examine heart valve disease in 86 Parkinson's disease patients who were treated with pergolide for more than three months and 47 control subjects.

The researchers found that significantly more pergolide patients had moderate to severe regurgitation in at least one heart valve (17.4 versus 4.3 percent, odds ratio 4.75), with the odds increasing with increasing cumulative dose of pergolide. A meta-analysis of seven trials, including this trial, involving 394 patients treated with pergolide and 280 controls showed similar results, with a higher risk of moderate to severe regurgitation associated with pergolide (odds ratio 3.1) that was dependent on the mean cumulative dose.

"Heart valve disease is independently associated with the use of pergolide treatment in patients having Parkinson's disease and correlates with its cumulative dose," Corvol and colleagues conclude.

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