The short-term effect of nicotine chewing gum in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Because of the inverse association of cigarette smoking with the risk of Parkinson's disease, we performed a short-term, double-blind, randomized controlled trial of nicotine polacrilex resin gum in patients with this disease. Forty-eight subjects were randomly assigned to chew either nicotine gum or placebo gum three times at 2-h intervals, with evaluation of symptoms before and after the trial. The nicotine gum was reasonably well tolerated, but there were no substantial differences in Parkinson's disease symptoms between the two treatment groups.