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Why target brain adenosine receptors? A historical perspective
Bertil B Fredholm1, Per Svenningsson2
1Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
Abstract:
The quest for a non-dopaminergic approach to treating Parkinson's disease (PD) has been quietly progressing over the past several decades, and is now finding its momentum. Here, in what is more a memoir than a comprehensive review, we discuss work carried out over the past 50 years to show that adenosine acts as a critical signaling molecule via actions against a specific family of receptors. Importantly for PD, adenosine A2A receptors have a selective localization to the basal ganglia and specifically to the indirect output pathway, offering a targeted, non-dopaminergic opportunity to modulate basal ganglia output.
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