After our recent article When People Tend to Start Parkinson's Medications, a reader e-mailed us to say that he was confused by this story and a few of the medical terms. It gave us a moment to reflect because we pride ourselves on boiling down complex medical lingo to information that nonmedical people can understand.
The same reader asked us to define the terms MAO and anticholergenic, so we gathered some information.
After dopamine has circulated in your body for a while chemicals called monoamine oxidase enzymes, or MAOs, start to break down the dopamine so that it can be removed fom the body. Pharmaceutical makers have created drugs that slowed the MAO breakdown process, keeping dopamine circulating in the body longer. The first one approved for use in Parkinson's disease was selegiline, marketed as Eldepryl. There is now a timed-release version of selegiline called Zelepar. Then, in 2006 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved another MAO inhibitor, rasagiline, which is marketed as Azilect.
Anticholergenics reduce the amount of acetylcholine circulating in a person's nervous system. Dopamine and acetylcholine are chemicals that balance each other in the brain. When the onset of Parkinson's disease destroys the majority of dopamine neurons, the brain fails to adjust the levels of acetylcholine, and the imbalance contributes to worse symptoms.
The anticholergenics that are currently on the market for patients living with Parkinson's are Cogentin (benztropine mesylate) and Artane (trihexyphenidyl).
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