Aporphines and Parkinson's Disease: Medical Tools for the Future

Parkinson's disease is a motor dysfunction that has been widely studied but many of the reports on commercial drugs for the treatment of this disease have afforded some undesirable side effects that generate an extensive and unviable treatment by economic costs and due to the bioavailability of the assayed compounds. At present, some molecules are used as L-DOPA agonists or can change the dopamine concentrations in the CNS. Thus, the use of aporphine-type alkaloids has given a real alternative due to the diverse natural sources where can be isolated or to obtain them by means of conventional syntheses. Isoquinoline alkaloids as liriodenine, phenanthrene-type alkaloids, alkoxy-hydroxyaporphine, aminothiazole-aporphine or lipoic ester aporphine derivatives are some of the examples to be considered in this mini-review, wherein the applied pharmacological effects to reduce the motor disorders and the possible medical properties of these alkaloids on the dopaminergic receptors are analyzed.