Drugs for the Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease

This volume provides a comprehensive reference on drugs employed to treat Parkinson's disease. Since pharmacology is dependent upon physiology, and physiology upon anatomy, the multiauthored contents build up from all these disciplines to applied therapeutics. Our knowledge of synaptic mechanisms in the striatum is reviewed; and drugs are considered as therapeutic tools to manipulate synaptic function. Methods of evaluating treatment in Parkinson's disease are discussed in order to provide a background against which the reader can determine whether therapeutic studies are meaningful. The volume deals with old drugs (anticholinergic agents), conventional drugs (levodopa and decarboxylase inhibitors) and new drugs (dopamine agonists). Drugs designed to modify the natural history of Parkinson's disease (antioxidants) are reviewed, and drugs employed to reduce adverse reactions are discussed (extracerebral D2 antagonists). Novel routes for administering drugs are included (parenteral infusions) and finally, current approaches to transplanting dopaminergic cells into the striatum are summarized. This book is intended to meet the needs of physicians who treat Parkinson's disease, to assist pharmacologists who are concerned with the development of improved methods for controlling symptoms, and to stimulate those neurobiologists who have an interest in attempting to slow down the inexorable progress of the disorder.