Atropa Belladonna is a very old plant, widespread ubiquitously in Italy and in Europe. The flowers are pedunculated and purplish. The flowers originate fruits that, at maturity, are a glossy, misleading blackberry. The plant is named by one of the three Fates, Atropos, the one who cuts the thread of every man's life. Atropa uses have been the most various, for example in the Middle Ages was used by “witches” to alter the mental status. The first time clinical use was proposed by a Bulgarian healer, Ivan Raev, who administered an Atropa Belladonna extract to a women suffering from sleeping sickness, a disease which assumed an epidemic diffusion around 1920. The disease was the consequence of a flu-like viral infection affecting also the brain and was characterized by extreme drowsiness and persistent motor alteration. The use of Atropa extract to treat such patients was them promoted by Regina Elena. The demonstration that the condition was a “treatable” disease saved the patients from the Nazi persecution and extermination programs. Thereafter it was realized that many patients were not responding to the treatment and new ways of intervention were developed, among which in the early sixties levodopa. The discovery of levodopa promoted the further research and the role of dopamine in the disease leading to several new drugs, nowadays, the multifaced role of cholinergic transmission in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is being reviewed considering the need of both inhibiting acetylcholine muscarinic receptors in certain extrapyramidal motor areas and promoting cholinergic transmission in other brain regions. More recently several non-dopaminergic targets have been identified and strategic to act upon them are being developed.
L’Atropa Belladonna è una pianta molto antica, diffusa in maniera ubiquitaria sia in Italia sia in Europa. I fiori sono peduncolati e di colore violaceo. Dai fiori si origina il frutto che, alla maturazione, è una bacca nera lucida. La pianta prende il nome da una delle tre Parche, Atropo, colei che tagliava il filo della vita di ogni uomo. Il suo utilizzo è stato fra i più svariati, per esempio nel Medioevo veniva impiegata dalle “streghe” per alterare lo stato psichico. L’utilizzo in ambito clinico nacque quando un guaritore bulgaro, Ivan Raev, lo somministrò ad una donna affetta da encefalite letargica intorno agli anni 40 del secolo scorso. La scoperta rivoluzionò la cura di questa malattia, che negli anni 20 aveva assunto un carattere epidemico. Va ricordato che, grazie anche alla Regina Elena di Savoia, che promosse la diffusione della cura, i malati encefalitici vennero risparmiati dallo sterminio nazista. Tuttavia il decotto di belladonna non era efficace in tutti i pazienti con sintomi parkinsoniani. Studi successivi portarono, nei primi anni 60, alla scoperta della L-DOPA che costituì un modello anche per lo sviluppo di nuovi altri farmaci per la malattia di Parkinson (ad es. i dopamino mimetici diretti). Negli ultimi anni sono stati valutati anche certi aspetti del coinvolgimento della trasmissione colinergica nelle manifestazioni della malattia, in particolare nelle disfunzioni cognitive, nella postura e nelle cadute. Oltre ai sistemi colinergici sono stati individuati altri target non dopaminergici, che potrebbero il bersaglio per nuove terapie future.
Atropa Belladonna nella terapia del morbo di Parkinson.
PASQUINI, FRANCESCA
2014/2015
Abstract
Atropa Belladonna is a very old plant, widespread ubiquitously in Italy and in Europe. The flowers are pedunculated and purplish. The flowers originate fruits that, at maturity, are a glossy, misleading blackberry. The plant is named by one of the three Fates, Atropos, the one who cuts the thread of every man's life. Atropa uses have been the most various, for example in the Middle Ages was used by “witches” to alter the mental status. The first time clinical use was proposed by a Bulgarian healer, Ivan Raev, who administered an Atropa Belladonna extract to a women suffering from sleeping sickness, a disease which assumed an epidemic diffusion around 1920. The disease was the consequence of a flu-like viral infection affecting also the brain and was characterized by extreme drowsiness and persistent motor alteration. The use of Atropa extract to treat such patients was them promoted by Regina Elena. The demonstration that the condition was a “treatable” disease saved the patients from the Nazi persecution and extermination programs. Thereafter it was realized that many patients were not responding to the treatment and new ways of intervention were developed, among which in the early sixties levodopa. The discovery of levodopa promoted the further research and the role of dopamine in the disease leading to several new drugs, nowadays, the multifaced role of cholinergic transmission in Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is being reviewed considering the need of both inhibiting acetylcholine muscarinic receptors in certain extrapyramidal motor areas and promoting cholinergic transmission in other brain regions. More recently several non-dopaminergic targets have been identified and strategic to act upon them are being developed.È consentito all'utente scaricare e condividere i documenti disponibili a testo pieno in UNITESI UNIPV nel rispetto della licenza Creative Commons del tipo CC BY NC ND.
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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14239/17795