Dopamine can induce fascinating, complex human behavioral states, including disinhibition, euphoria, or elaborate stereotypies, whereas dopamine deficiency can cause anxiety or sadness. Limited data suggest that these phenomena may involve dysfunction of orbital frontal cortex, cingulate cortex, or ventral striatum. The dopamine D3 receptor (D3R) has an anatomic distribution that suggests it co...

Impulse control disorders (ICDs) are debilitating side effects of dopamine replacement therapy (DRT) in Parkinson's disease (PD) that severely affect the quality of life of patients. While DRT, the pattern and extent of neurodegeneration, and prodromic factors of vulnerability (e.g. impulsivity) have all been hypothesized to play a role in the development of ICDs, their respective, and potentia...

Treatment of human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells with 1 mM 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+) for 3 days induced production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), followed by caspase-3 activation, cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), and apoptotic cell death with DNA fragmentation and characteristic morphological changes (condensed chromatin and fragmented nuclei). Simultaneous treatment wi...

BACKGROUND In Australia, there is voluntary reporting of suspected adverse events (AEs) of therapeutic medicines. Some dopamine agonists (DAs) have serious AEs. OBJECTIVE We aimed to explore the pattern of DA AE reporting over two decades. METHODS We analysed AE case line listings obtained from the Australian Committee on the Safety of Medicines (ACSOM) for bromocriptine, cabergoline, pergo...

BACKGROUND According to clinical guidelines, dopamine agonists are the first-line treatment of restless legs syndrome (RLS). OBJECTIVES To evaluate efficacy and safety of dopamine agonists for RLS. SEARCH STRATEGY We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library 2008, Issue 4), MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO and CINAHL, from January 1985 to December 2008, plus...

Starting from L-aspartic acid the preparation of 8-aminopyrido[1,2-a]indole derivatives as benzo-fused analogs of the dopamine autoreceptor agonist 1 is reported. The key step of the synthesis is the Tf2O induced cyclization of the 1,2-amino alcohol 6. Receptor binding studies indicated selective affinity for the D-2 autoreceptor. Among the tested compounds, the dipropylamino derivative 2 showe...