Neurodegenerative
movement disorders mainly include
Parkinson's disease, atypical parkinsonisms,
Huntington disease, and
hereditary ataxia.
Riluzole is the only
drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The
neuroprotective effects of
riluzole have been observed in experimental models of neurodegenerative
movement disorders. In this paper, we aimed to systematically analyze the efficacy and safety of
riluzole for patients with neurodegenerative
movement disorder. We searched the electronic databases such as PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Library and China National Knowledge Infrastructure until June 2017 for the eligible randomized controlled trials, as well as the unpublished and ongoing trials. For continuous data, we calculated standardized mean differences with 95% confidence intervals if studies did not use the same scales to measure outcomes. For dichotomous data, we calculated risk differences if a trial reported no adverse events or dropouts. We pooled the results using a random-effects model. We included nine studies with 1320 patients with neurodegenerative
movement disorders, which compared
riluzole with placebo. No significant difference was found in the number of participants with adverse events but with motor improvement in
hereditary ataxia. There were only two studies focusing on
neuroprotective effect.
Riluzole is well-tolerated in the patients with neurodegenerative
movement disorders.
Riluzole seems to be promising for patients with
hereditary ataxia in symptomatic effect, which needs to be further confirmed by well-designed studies in the future. Moreover, it makes sense to design long-term study focusing on
neuroprotective effect of
riluzole in disease-modifying.