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To reduce “off” time with levodopa therapy in patients with Parkinson disease (PD), clinicians often coprescribe carbidopa and a catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) inhibitor such as entacapone. Investigators tested whether increasing the dose of carbidopa would further reduce “off” time. They randomized 117 patients to 4 weeks each of standard therapy (a 4:1 ratio dose of levodopa/carbidopa plus 200 mg of entacapone [LCE]) or fixed carbidopa doses of 65 or 105 mg combined with 75, 100, 125, or 150 mg of levodopa plus 200 mg of entacapone. Patients received between three and eight doses per day. The manufacturer-sponsored study was a double-blind, double-dummy, active-controlled, crossover, multicenter, phase II investigation.
Baseline mean …