European Compliance Study in Parkinson's Disease

This is an observational study of how patients with Parkinson's disease take their medication. Antiparkinson medication will be monitored using electronic pill bottles, MEMS, Aardex®, Switzerland (which contain a microprocessor in the cap that records the time and date of bottle openings). This gives information about the amount of prescribed medication taken (total compliance), the percentage of days when the correct number of doses is taken (daily compliance), and the percentage of doses taken at the correct time interval (timing compliance). Five countries will be involved, (UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France). The total number of patients recruited across Europe will be 144. The study size has been calculated based on a single centre study in Glasgow where 2/3 of 120 patients were scheduled to undergo electronic monitoring as part of a different study design. Accordingly data is available which has informed the expected number of patients completing the study (around a 10% drop out rate) and in order to test 6 key variables with potential influence on therapy compliance and using the general statistical guide that between 10 and 20 patients should be studied per variable to be examined, a sample size of around 120 evaluable patients has been calculated.