Poor Tolerability of a Transdermal Nicotine Treatment in Parkinson's Disease

Abstract

Studies assessing the effect of transdermal nicotine in Parkinson's disease (PD) have generated mixed results regarding its efficacy to treat motor and cognitive deficits. These studies generally reported good tolerability in nonsmoking PD patients. The authors report the tolerability data of an open trial with transdermal nicotine in PD. Twenty-two therapeutically well-controlled nonsmoking PD patients received a transdermal nicotine treatment over 25 days according to the following fixed titration schedule: 7 mg for the first 11 days, 14 mg for the next 11 days, and 21 mg for the last 3 days. Fourteen PD patients (64%) had side effects such as nausea, vomiting, and dizziness, and 10 of them withdrew from the study. Factors such as age, body mass index, disease duration, and motor disability were not related to this intolerance. Transdermal nicotine can produce unpleasant adverse effects in patients with PD. Given that similar doses of nicotine were better tolerated in previous studies, the authors suspect the pharmacokinetic profile of the transdermal delivery system to be a determining factor in the effect of nicotine treatment in PD.