In a new study reported in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, Tatyana Sotnikova and colleagues from Duke University create a mouse model that recapitulates many of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and use it to screen potential therapeutic drugs. By eliminating the dopamine transporter - the protein responsible for recycling the chemical into neurons - in mice, the authors reduced dopamine levels in the midbrain by 20-fold. In addition, chemically inhibiting dopamine production in these mice resulted in essentially unmeasurable levels of the neurotransmitter, since it could now neither be produced at normal levels nor be recycled.
The authors tested a number of drugs at various doses and found that in addition to L-DOPA-related treatments, drugs related to amphetamine were effective in ameliorating muscle rigidity, tremor, and impaired movement in these mice. Most effective was methylenedioxymethamphetamine HCl (MDMA), commonly known as ecstasy. It has been shown that amphetamines can trigger release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine and cause sudden bursts in neurotransmission, leading to a feeling of alertness, increased muscular activity, and reduced fatigue. This study, however, shows that treating mice with MDMA does not increase dopamine levels; furthermore, treating the mice with drugs related to serotonin or norepinephrine did not ameliorate the disease's sympto
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Contact: Paul Ocampo
press@plos.org
415-624-1224
Public Library of Science
1-Aug-2005