When used to treat patients with Parkinson's disease pergolide acts at dopamine receptors in the corpus striatum to improve locomotor activity, reducing the tremor, gait disturbances, bradykinesia or akinesia and rigidity experienced by such patients. Treatment with pergolide often allows substantial reductions in concomitant levodopa dosage, and occasionally levodopa can be completely replaced by pergolide therapy in short term use. Pergolide has a long duration of action, thus reducing the wearing-off and end-of-dose phenomena frequently seen with long term levodopa therapy, suppressing fluctuations in levodopa response, and increasing total 'on' time. Despite a lack of well controlled studies comparing this drug with other dopamine agonist agents, pergolide appears to result in adverse effects and anti-Parkinson responses similar to those of bromocriptine and lisuride. Thus, pergolide would appear to be at least as useful as other dopamine agonists such as bromocriptine or lisuride for the management of patients with Parkinson's disease when administered in combination with levodopa. Future research should be directed towards establishing which patients are most likely to benefit from pergolide therapy, and clarifying the relative efficacy and safety of the anti-Parkinsonian drugs available to the clinician. If pergolide does provide clinical benefit when substituted for levodopa-adjunct drugs that are producing less than optimal control, this will be an advantage in a disease area which at present has few therapeutic options.