What is 'levodopa'?

What is 'levodopa'?

Neal Hermanowicz (Director of the Movement Disorders Program) gives expert video advice on: What are the side effects of Dopamine Receptor Agonists?; What is 'impulse control disorder'? and more...

The arrival of Levodopa remains one of the triumphs of clinical neuroscience, historically. It was identified in 1959 that people with Parkinson's Disease have a deficiency of dopamine in their brain, and this is a significant factor in the development of the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease - the fact that dopamine is diminished. Now, it's not possible to orally supplement dopamine, because if you take it by mouth, it doesn't get into your brain. That was identified a long time ago. It was figured out that if people give the chemical precursor, the molecule of the brain uses to make dopamine, that will work just as well. Levodopa is exactly that. It's the chemical precursor that the brain uses to synthesize dopamine. People take Levodopa in a tablet form - it's absorbed through their gut, through their intestine, gets into the blood and ultimately does pass into the brain. The brain tissue takes it and synthesizes dopamine from this. The brain cells that remain are working in overdrive, some of the brain cells that have been making dopamine are lost. The ones that remain are working harder to keep that dopamine level up. To encourage that, we give people Levodopa so that the brain cells that are working harder, in overdrive, can have that substrate that they need to make more dopamine. it works quite well.