About one in four patients taking pergolide or cabergoline show signs of heart-valve damage according to two studies.
A U.S. official to call for a halt in the use of two drugs used for Parkinson’s disease, pergolide and cabergoline due to an increased risk of heart-valve damage.
Patients who took pergolide or cabergoline are four to seven times as likely to suffer heart-valve damage as patients who did not, reported two studies in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
In a British study, 19 percent of patients taking pergolide or cabergoline suffered heart-valve damage. An Italian study found heart-valve damage in 23 percent of patients who took pergolide and almost 29 percent for those prescribed cabergoline.
Click here to read the full report from National Institutes of Health
