Psychiatric aspects in Parkinsonism treated with L-dopa

Psychiatric aspects in Parkinsonism treated with L-dopa.

Psychiatric aspects of patients with Parkinsonism treated with L-dopa are described. These include acute psychosis in patients with or without previous psychiatric illness and worsening or improvement of pre-existing psychiatric conditions. Therapeutic management is discussed The relevance of these studies to the understanding of the psychiatric aspects of Parkinsonism in general is discussed.

The cerebrospinal fluid homovanillic acid concentration in patients with Parkinsonism treated with L-dopa.

Almost all the dopamine in normal human brain is contained in the basal ganglia and related structures (Bertler, 1961). Very low dopamine concentrations are present in the caudate nucleus, putamen, and substantia nigra of subjects with Parkinson's disease (Ehringer and Hornykiewicz, 1960; Hornykiewicz, 1963; Bernheimer and Hornykiewicz, 1965). Lesions in the substantia nigra have been considere...

The L-dopa response in vascular parkinsonism.

OBJECTIVE To determine whether a positive L-dopa response in vascular parkinsonism (VP) is correlated with the presence of nigrostriatal pathology due to either vascular damage or neuronal cell loss. METHODS Seventeen patients with pathologically confirmed VP were selected from the pathological collection of the Queen Square Brain Bank for Neurological Disorders, and their L-dopa response dur...

Interactions of L-dopa and amantadine in patients with Parkinsonism.

Twenty-seven patients with Parkinson's disease participated in a double-blind crossover trial of L-dopa and amantadine. Each drug was given for six weeks, and six weeks were allowed to elapse between the two periods of treatment. Marked improvement occurred in patients given L-dopa first, whereas no clinical effect was observed in those patients treated first with amantadine. L-dopa was less be...

Reversal of the glabellar reflex in Parkinsonism by L-dopa.