Treatments
What the evidence shows about the drugs, the therapies and the surgery — including where it shows less than is usually claimed.
Do stem cell transplants work for Parkinson's?
Clinical evidence does not settle whether stem cell transplants improve movement or slow Parkinson's disease. Most completed trials are extremely small and lack comparison groups, and larger trials show conflicting or placebo-driven results.
Can Ozempic or other GLP-1 drugs slow Parkinson's?
No clinical trials show that semaglutide slows Parkinson's. While some smaller trials of older diabetes drugs showed modest movement benefits, the largest and longest trial found no benefit at all.
Does exercise slow Parkinson's disease?
Clinical trials show exercise improves movement and fitness in Parkinson's disease, but no study proves it stops dopamine neurons from dying or slows the underlying biological condition.
Does a higher levodopa dose bring on wearing off sooner?
Dyskinesia and wearing off are usually named in the same breath as "levodopa complications". On the evidence they answer to different things: dose tracks one of them and not the other.
Does starting levodopa early make Parkinson's worse?
A twenty-year worry about levodopa — that starting it early hastens the disease or uses up its benefit — has now been tested directly in two randomised trials. Neither found what the worry predicted.