Health and Healthcare

Why Parkinson's Patients Should Be Optimistic About Acadia's Study

Chris Lange

Published: September 23, 2019 12:10 pm

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 3:33 pm

Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: ACAD) shares made a handy gain on Monday after the firm announced positive results from an eight-week Phase 2 study evaluating pimavanserin as a therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients with depressive symptoms.

Specifically, pimavanserin is being evaluated as a monotherapy or adjunct to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor for PD.

These results were presented during a poster session at the 2019 International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders in Nice, France.

Additional results from this study showed that PD patients treated with pimavanserin for depression also demonstrated improvement on multiple secondary endpoints compared to baseline.

Overall, pimavanserin was well tolerated and treatment emergent adverse events reported were consistent with other studies of patients treated with pimavanserin. Treatment emergent adverse events reported included: falls (8.5%), nausea (6.4%), diarrhea (4.3%), edema (4.3%), skin abrasion (4.3%) and urinary tract infection (4.0%).

Gus Alva, M.D., founder and medical director of ATP Clinical Research and co-author of the study, commented:

Mood disorders, particularly depression, occur in approximately 50% of patients with PD, and depressive symptoms in patients with PD are associated with diminished quality of life, greater disability, and faster progression of physical symptoms. Results of this open-label study suggest that pimavanserin may be a potential treatment to be further investigated for depression associated with Parkinson’s disease.

Acadia shares traded up 2% to $41.63 on Monday, in a 52-week range of $14.01 to $44.85. The consensus price target is $52.42.