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Press release
A glimmer of hope for Parkinson patients in the treatment of dyskinesia | |||
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Paris, May 15, 2003 |
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| Dyskinesia is a particularly crippling motor impairment that very frequently occurs in patients with Parkinson's disease who are treated with levodopa, one of the main treatments available at this time. Two French teams (CNRS and INSERM), in partnership with a German team, have proposed a new treatment for these levodopa-induced dyskinesias. It is a molecule known as BP897 that reacts by normalizing the activity of particular dopamine receptors, the D3 receptors. This research should eventually lead to the improvement of the quality of life of people suffering from Parkinson's disease. These results are now available on the Internet site of the journal Nature Medicine at the following address: http: // www.nature.com/nm. Levodopa, a precursor of dopamine, is the most common medication used for the treatment of Parkinson's disease at this time. However, this treatment is highly unsatisfactory due to its significant side effects. Among them, but not the least of them, is dyskinesia, which results in the gradual appearance of slow and uncoordinated involuntary movements, shaking, stiffness and problems walking. Patients treated with this drug see the symptoms of Parkinson's disappear but they experience increasing difficulties to remain standing or even sitting. The Laboratory of Physiology and Physiopathology of Cell Signaling (Laboratoire de Physiologie et de Physiopathologie de la Signalisation Cellulaire, CNRS - Université Bordeaux 2) (E. Bezard, Th. Boraud and C.E. Gross) and the Molecular Pharmacology and Neurobiology Unit (Unité Neurobiologie et Pharmacologie Moléculaire) of INSERM, directed by Pierre Sokoloff, have recently discovered that a particular dopamine receptor in animals, the D3 receptor, could contribute to the appearance of dyskinesia. These results therefore offer hope for a new treatment. However, in their research published in Nature Medicine, the authors show that the D3 receptor is not only involved in the induction of dyskinesia but also in the relief of Parkinson's symptoms brought on by levodopa. How then will it be possible to resolve the difficult problem of eliminating some symptoms while bringing on others? Researchers have found the solution, thanks to a molecule with very specific properties, known as BP897. BP897 is a partially selective agonist of the D3 receptor. In this capacity, it acts as a "stabilizing" agent. In other words, it makes it possible to maintain the stimulation of the D3 receptor at a controlled level. The results are remarkable. Dyskinesia disappeared in monkeys rendered parkinsonian that were treated with a combination of levodopa and BP897, with no recurrence of their Parkinson's symptoms. Clinical studies must now be carried out on patients suffering from dyskinesia in order to test the validity of these results on humans. The experimental model used at this time, which reproduces human symptomatology almost perfectly, leads us to believe that this molecule, BP897, could be a serious candidate for battling dyskinesia. It would then make it possible to treat this particularly crippling side effect of Parkinson's disease, which affects 100,000 people in France. References: ATTENUATION OF LEVODOPA-INDUCED DYSKINESIA BY NORMALIZING DOPAMINE D3 RECEPTOR FUNCTION NATURE MEDICINE, ON-LINE PUBLICATION ON MAY 12, 2003; DOI 10.1038/NM875 ERWAN BÉZARD, SANDRINE FERRY, ULRICH MACH, HOLGER STARK, LUDOVIC LERICHE, THOMAS BORAUD, CHRISTIAN GROSS AND PIERRE SOKOLOFF Researcher
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