PARDOPA

Levodopa, a precursor of dopamine, crosses the blood-brain barrier and gets converted to dopamine in the basal ganglia while carbidopa is a dopa-decarboxylase inhibitor. The latter prevents conversion of L-dopa to dopamine outside the brain and minimises side effects.

Carbidopa reduces the amount of levodopa required to produce a given response by about 75 percent and, when administered with levodopa, increases both plasma levels and the plasma half-life of levodopa, and decreases plasma and urinary dopamine and homovanillic acid. The plasma half-life of levodopa is about 50 minutes, without carbidopa. When carbidopa and levodopa are administered together, the half-life of levodopa is increased to about 1.5 hours.

Dosage is best initiated with one tablet of PARDOPA 25-100 three times a day. This dosage schedule provides 75 mg of carbidopa per day. Dosage may be increased by one tablet every day or every other day, as necessary, until a dosage of eight tablets of PARDOPA 25-100 a day is reached.

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