l-deprenyl buy is a powerful antidepressant drug that has been used for decades in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). It also happens to be an irreversible inhibitor of monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B), which has enabled it to be labeled with 11C and used in PET studies of brain metabolism. In one such study Fowler et al. showed that the resulting distribution of tracer activity in the brain corresponded well with the known distribution of MAO-B. Activity was highest in the thalamus and striatum (caudate and putamen) with concentrations of activity in the brainstem and cortex significantly higher than in white matter.
L-Deprenyl: Benefits and Uses
To examine whether l-deprenyl might ameliorate cognitive symptoms in dementia of the Alzheimer type, we studied 17 patients with this disorder in a double-blind, serial-treatment design. l-Deprenyl (10 mg/d) or placebo were administered for 10 days. In addition, 40 mg/d of rasagiline was given for 3 weeks to two of these patients. At low doses rasagiline is thought to selectively inhibit MAO-B; at high doses it nonselectively inhibits both MAO-A and MAO-B.
The results showed that l-deprenyl and its radiolabeled metabolites had a relatively rapid uptake in the brain, which was followed by a rapid decrease resulting from MAO-B blockage. The images in scan 2 were characterized by much lower activity than those of the first scan, and semiquantitative analyses demonstrated that this was due to reduction of tracer binding in the brain as a result of rasagiline inhibition of MAO-B. Analysis of serial blood samples indicated that this effect on MAO-B site occupancy lasted for 6.5 d in the pig brain and 30 d in the baboon brain.