Novel Carbidopa-Levodopa Formulation Improves Sleep Quality in Parkinson Disease

Patients with Parkinson disease (PD) have significant improvements in domains of sleep quality with treatment with oral carbidopa-levodopa formulation, according to study results to be presented at the 2025 American Academy of Neurology (AAN) annual meeting, held from April 5 to 9, 2025, in San Diego, California.

Compared with the immediate-release formulation, the extended-release formulation of carbidopa-levodopa resulted in increases in “Good On” time per day and per dose, in the RISE-PD trial.

In the current analysis, researchers evaluated Parkinson’s Disease Sleep Scale-2 (PDSS-2) scores in patients with PD who converted to treatment with carbidopa-levodopa in the RISE-PD trial.

Participants who were enrolled in the 20-week phase 3 RISE-PD study — including a 3-week open-label immediate-release carbidopa-levodopa optimization phase, a 4-week open-label dose-conversion phase, and a 13-week double-blind randomized maintenance phase — and converted to treatment with carbidopa-levodopa were eligible in the current analysis.

Outcome measures were changes in scores on the PDSS-2 from study entry to the end of the dose-conversion phase.

A total of 506 patients completed the conversion to carbidopa-levodopa.

Significant improvements were seen in PDSS-2 scores (mean difference, -2.35; P <.01) in the study period. Specifically, patients had reductions in sleep disturbances, motor symptoms at night, and PD symptoms at night (mean differences, -1.07, -0.62, and -0.65, respectively; all P <.01).

“Conversion to [extended-release oral carbidopa-levodopa] significantly improved sleep quality in PD patients, as measured by PDSS-2, addressing both sleep disturbances and nighttime motor symptoms,” the researchers concluded.