Abhimanyu Mahajan, MD, and other researchers from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit reported similar results with pimavanserin at the AAN annual meeting in a separate, smaller, retrospective chart review of 16 patients with Parkinson’s disease–associated psychosis and 1 with Lewy body dementia.
These patients had a mean duration of parkinsonism of nearly 12 years and more than 2 years of psychotic symptoms, which consisted of daily or continuous hallucinations in all but one patient.
Telephone interviews with patients and caregivers revealed that 10 of 14 had improvement in hallucinations, and 3 had stopped taking it because of either no benefit or remission. Of six patients who took pimavanserin monotherapy, half improved from severe to mild hallucination severity (less than one episode per week), two had no change, and one improved from severe to moderate. For the other eight patients who took pimavanserin with another antipsychotic, two had no change in hallucination severity, two went from severe to mild, three improved from severe to moderate, and one went from moderate to mild. The patients reported no major adverse events.
Ms. Sellers and another author had no disclosures. Dr. Claassen disclosed personal compensation for consulting, serving on a scientific advisory board, speaking, or other activities with several companies, including Acadia, which markets pimavanserin.
Two of the authors of Dr. Mahajan’s study reported financial ties to Acadia and other companies.
SOURCE: Sellers J et al. AAN 2018, abstract P1.040 and Mahajan A et al. AAN 2018, abstract P5.065