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From att!K.ERGO.CS.CMU.EDU!Timothy.Freeman Tue Aug 7 20:52:57 1990
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Reply-To: Tim Freeman <>
Subject: CRYONICS: Summary of some Deprenyl research
In-Reply-To: Your message of Thu, 02 Aug 90 22:17:44 -0400.
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Date: Tue, 07 Aug 90 20:41:54 EDT
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From:
Recently I went to the library to read about deprenyl. I started with
a cheesy newsletter that fortunately had lots of references
[Deprenyl89] and a medline search pointing to an article about how
deprenyl makes rats live longer [Knoll89].
>From the paper by Knoll about making rats live longer [Knoll89], it
seems that deprenyl prevents damage to a part of the brain called the
stratium. The human stratium doesn't start deteriorating until age
45, so (assuming that Knoll's model of what's happening is right)
there isn't any point in taking deprenyl before then. The rats were
two years old before treatment began.
They watched the sexual behavior of rats treated with deprenyl and
placebo in a dimly lit environment, and "the differences are so great
that any statistical analysis would be supererogatory" (page 528). In
addition to having more fun, the deprenyl-treated rats lived
significantly longer (the statistics weren't supererogatory this time,
p < 0.001). Of the rats given deprenyl, the ones that were more
sexually active lived longer than the ones that were less sexually
active.
This paper pointed to a paper by Birkmayer [Birkmayer85] which
describes a study showing that a combination of l-deprenyl, L-dopa,
and benserazide makes people with Parkinson's disease live longer than
they do if they are just given l-dopa and benserazide.
The trade names of these substances are a bit confusing. The
combination of l-dopa and benserazide is called "Madopar(r)". The
trade name for l-deprenyl (also known as selegiline) is "Eldepryl(r)",
and a combination of Madopar and l-deprenyl is called "Jumex(r)".
There were three groups of patients. 377 were treated with Madopar
only, 81 received Jumex (deprenyl and Madopar) only, and 483 started
with Madopar and were given the Jumex only after increasing Madopar
dosages failed to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. The
groups were not matched; there were a number of statistically
significant differences between the groups. The patients who received
deprenyl received 5 to 10 milligrams of it. All patients were seen 1
to 4 times a year to adjust the Madopar dosage.
The deprenyl-treated patients lived significantly longer (15.3 months)
than the patients who received Madopar alone. The patients who
received Jumex from the beginning were less disabled by Parkinson's
disease than the ones who only received Madopar. However, the
patients who were only given Jumex after the Madopar stopped working
were more disabled than the ones given Madopar, although they lived
longer. From this it seems reasonable to conclude that deprenyl
helps prevent the damage from Parkinson's disease, but it doesn't make
existing Parkinson's disease better.
Most of the stastics used in this study attempt to compensate for the
differences between the groups, and I don't understand them.
The cheesy newsletter (Offshore Medical Therapies, [Deprenyl89])
pointed to a study of deprenyl used as an antidepressant [Mann80],
which also discusses the safety of using deprenyl. L-deprenyl acts as
a MAO inhibitor. The standard danger from MAO inhibitors is called
the "cheese effect": if a person on MAO inhibitors eats cheese or
certain other foods, then they get incredibly high blood pressure, and
sometimes they die. Deprenyl doesn't have this effect when used at
the proper dosage (about 1mg/10kg), because it inhibits the MAO in the
brain but not the MAO in the gut.
This study involved 12 people, and it was not double-blind. Those
people who did not respond to one week of placebo administered
single-blind were given deprenyl for three weeks. The dose was 5
mg/day in week 1, 10 mg/day in week 2, and 15 mg/day in week three.
The deprenyl did significantly decrease the scores a standard test for
depression. There were no biological abnormalities observed in various
laboratory tests, but the following psychological side effects were
observed:
Side Effect Number of people (out of 12)
Initial Insomnia 7
Increased Libido 4
Agitated Arousal 2
Anorexia 5
Anticholinergic effects 3
In conclusion: I'm not going to take deprenyl yet, because I'm too
young. If I were 45 or older, I would read a little bit more about
the safety of the substance, and if nothing surprising turned up and
no practical difficulties stopped me, I would start taking it, at a
dose of about 1 mg/10kg/day.
References:
@article ( BIRKMAYER85,
key = "Birkmayer85" ,
author = "W. Birkmayer and J. Knoll and P. Riederer and M.
B. H. Youdim and Vera Hars and J. Marton" ,
title = "Increased Life Expectancy Resulting from Addition
of L-Deprenyl to Madopar(r) Treatment in Parkinson's Disease: A
Longterm Study" ,
journal = "Journal of Neural Transmission" ,
volume = "64" ,
year = "1985" ,
pages = "113--127" ,
keywords= "tsf" ,
annote = "Tim has a copy." ,
)
@article ( DEPRENYL89,
key = "Deprenyl89" ,
author = "Anonymous" ,
title = "Deprenyl: A New Life Extension Drug" ,
journal = "Offshore Medical Therapies" ,
number = "3" ,
month = "Summer" ,
year = "1989" ,
pages = "1--2" ,
keywords= "tsf" ,
annote = "Tim has a copy. Also has Arcalion 200 article." ,
note = "Annual subscription is $19 from Offshore Medical
Therapies, P. O. Box 833, Farmingdale NY 11737. It's quarterly, about
4 pages per issue. Lots of references." ,
bibdate = "Tue Aug 7 18:55:25 1990" ,
)
@article ( KNOLL89,
key = "Knoll89" ,
author = "J. Knoll and J. Dallo and T. T. Yen" ,
title = "Striatal Dopamine, Sexual Activity and Lifespan.
Longevity of Rats Treated with (-)Deprenyl" ,
journal = "Life Sciences" ,
volume = "45" ,
year = "1989" ,
pages = "525-531" ,
keywords= "tsf" ,
annote = "Tim has a copy." ,
)
@article ( MANN80,
key = "Mann80" ,
author = "John Mann and Samuel Gershon" ,
title = "L-Deprenyl, A Selective Monoamine Oxidase Type-B
Inhibitor in Endogenous Depression" ,
journal = "Life Sciences" ,
volume = "26" ,
year = "1980" ,
pages = "877-882" ,
keywords= "tsf" ,
annote = "Tim has a copy." ,
)
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