Prescribing patterns of antiparkinson drugs in a group of Colombian patients, 2015

Introduction: Parkinson’s disease, whose prevalence in Colombia is 4.7 per 1,000 inhabitants, is a
public health problem and a therapeutic challenge for health professionals.
Objective: To determine the prescribing patterns of antiparkinson drugs and the variables associated
with its use in a population from Colombia.
Materials and methods: We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study. We selected patients who
had been given antiparkinson drugs uninterruptedly between January 1st and March 31st, 2015 from a
systematized database of approximately 3.5 million people affiliated to the Colombian health system.
We included sociodemographic, pharmacologic and comedication variables. For the multivariate
analysis, we used the IBM SPSSTM-22 software.
Results: A total of 2,898 patients was included; the mean age was 65.1years, and 50.7% were men;
69.4% (n=2010) of people received monotherapy and 30.6% combination therapy with two to five
antiparkinson drugs. The most frequently prescribed drugs were: levodopa 45.5% (n=1,318 patients),
biperiden 23.1% (670), amantadine 18.3% (531) and pramipexole 16.3% (471). The most commonly
used association was levodopa/carbidopa + entacapone (n=311; 10.7%). Multivariate analysis showed
that being male (OR=1.56; 95%CI: 1.321-1.837), over 60 years (OR=1.41; 95%CI 1.112-1.782)
and receiving treatment in the city of Barranquilla (OR=2.23; 95%CI 1.675-2.975) were statistically
associated with a greater risk of using combination therapy; 68.2% (n=1,977) patients were given
concomitant treatment with other drugs.
Conclusions: Prescribing habits of drugs with high therapeutic value predominated, mainly in
antiparkinson drugs monotherapy. Most were employed in the usual recommended doses. It is
necessary to explore the clinical effectiveness of the medications studied and differentiate between
disease and parkinsonian syndromes subtypes.