Amantadine treatment is an independent predictor of improved survival in Parkinson's disease

Amantadine has been used for more than 20 years in the symptomatic treatment of Parkinson9s disease (PD).Several recent discoveries suggest that amantadine could also have a neuroprotective effect in PD. We studied survival in all parkinsonism (including PD and other parkinsonian syndromes) patients attending a single clinic, employing standard survival curves and a Cox regression model, to identify independent predictive variables for survival (while taking into account factors potentially associated with both outcome and treatment selection). Amantadine-treated patients (n = 250) were similar to the patients not treated with amantadine (n = 586) in terms of age, gender, type of parkinsonism, Hoehn and Yahr stage and dementia status at initial neurological visit. Amantadine use was an independent predictor of improved survival (p NEUROLOGY 1996;46: 1551-1556