Dopamine Agonists and their Optimality in Treating Parkinson's Disease Compared to Other Treatments

Abstract

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that has been plaguing tens of thousands of people each year, and as a result, there has been lots of research to find a drug or compound which, if used correctly, will allow for a decrease in the symptoms of the disorder. One idea that is of question is whether dopamine agonists might be able to help reduce the effects that the disease has upon a person. As a result, the question of how useful dopamine agonists are in the treatment of or minimization of the effects of Parkinson’s Disease rises. This paper focuses heavily on the topic of the optimality of dopamine agonists in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and relies upon past research on the subject of PD treatments/therapies. Although an agonist, in scientific terms, is known as a chemical substance capable of combining with a specific receptor on a cell and initiating the same reaction or activity typically produced by the original substance itself, these dopamine agonists have not proven to be as effective as can be assumed. These agonists, even with the ability to imitate the reaction of dopamine agonists, are not as useful as other treatments to PD, such as Levodopa. In this paper, comparisons were conducted between the two largest categories of PD therapy to derive a conclusion. The findings indicate some rather surprising results, and prove that dopamine agonists might not be as useful in the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease as one might assume.