Quinones and Other Reactive Oxygen Species in Neurobiologic, Apoptotic, and Neurotoxic Processes

The role of catecholamine O-quinones in health and disease: what we know and what we don't know

I had long thought that COMT had a minor role in cellular metabolism of dopamine and in Parkinson's disease per se. The newest drugs for Parkinsonism, however, are COMT inhibitors. In your discussion, COMT was found to protect against formation of toxic o-semiquinones. Are COMT inhibitors seen as drugs that might accelerate the progression of Parkinson's disease, by inadvertantly increasing intracellular oxidative stress from dopamine metabolism?

Tue Dec 15