Comparison of utilization of Sinemet(R) and Parkinson's disease mortality as surrogate indicators of Parkinson's disease in the United States

Objective: To compare two surrogate indicators of population disease burden for Parkinson's disease: utilization of Sinemet(R) and Parkinson's disease mortality. Design: National Center for Health Statistics data were used to tabulate Parkinson's disease mortality in the United States by state for 1987-1989. Sinemet(R) sales data by state were obtained from Merck & Co., Inc. for 1988. Least squares regression analyses were used to assess the relationship between Sinemet(R) utilization and Parkinson's disease mortality. Setting: United States. Results: Regression analyses showed extraordinarily strong associations between state-level Parkinson's disease mortality and Sinemet(R) utilization (underlying-cause model r(2) = 0.969, p = 0.0001; multiple-cause model r(2) = 0.980, p = 0.0001). Conclusions: Sinemet(R) utilization very closely parallels Parkinson's disease mortality, suggesting that Sinemet(R) utilization and Parkinson's disease mortality are both useful indices of the population burden of Parkinson's disease for large-scale epidemiological studies. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.