Terazosin connection

[pvw2]

Is there a connection here because Terazosin is also used to reduce high blood pressure? See the links.

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

healthunlocked.com/parkinso...

[WinnieThePoo]

I haven't looked at the links. Terazosin is an alpha blocker. In the olden days alpha blockers were used to lower blood pressure. A bit. They do the job but not much. So nowadays other drugs are usually used instead

[pvw2 in reply to WinnieThePoo]

The question is what is it doing that helps PD so much? It affects the nervous system, muscles, and circulatory system . Could it be stopping brain microbleeding? The only way we know it works is from big data analysis, which doesn't tell us why.

[Zella23]

I always thought there was a link between High blood pressure and Parkinson’s although never found a lot of information when researching. It seemed to be a strong link in my husbands case. I always blamed the meds given to my husband as they gave him side effects and were changed a couple of times. About 5 moths after he began them, he suffered with odd shaking and lack of co ordination which seemed the first symptoms he saw. They did go away.

Fast forward 5 years after that and dx of Parkinsons.

Recently stopped taking BP meds as he’s taking Terazosin instead of Tamulosin.

Doing well at the moment but early days as he’s only been taking for just over a month.

I ll update if improvements noticed.

[pvw2 in reply to Zella23]

There apparently is something different about Terazosin when it comes to PD.

[Zella23 in reply to pvw2]

We re hoping it will help slow progression, from research on men with Parkinson’s using this drug.

[Hidden in reply to Zella23]

Alpha blockers are also used to alleviate the problems of benign prostatic hyperplasia. I have been taking doxazosin since 2006 and was diagnosed with PD in 2008. Fortunately my symptoms have not deteriorated since diagnosis.

[pvw2 in reply to Hidden]

"Fortunately my symptoms have not deteriorated since diagnosis." That's impressive for 12 years.

[pvw2]

Quote: But recently, the researchers behind this new study discovered that Terazosin has another action in the body: it activates phosphoglycerate kinase 1.

What is phosphoglycerate kinase 1?

Phosphoglycerate kinase 1 is an enzyme that catalyzes the formation of ATP....

Quote: In this study, the researchers found that terazosin binds to and activates the enzymatic activity of Phosphoglycerate kinase 1. Interestingly, this activation led to enhanced activity of the heat shock protein/chaperone Hsp90, which plays an important role in cellular homeostasis and promotes multi-stress resistance responses when a cell is damaged or under stress. In cell cultures, they found that terazosin enhanced Phosphoglycerate kinase 1 activity (increasing ATP levels), which blocked cell death when the cells were exposed to toxins.

This result suggested to the investigators that terazosin may have neuroprotective properties, and they wanted to test this idea in models of Parkinson’s....

Basically, every PD model that the researchers tested terazosin on suggested the drug has beneficial effects.

It all sounds almost too good to be true, right?…

…but here’s the thing:

Given that terazosin is a commonly used drug, and has been in clinical use for a long time now (it was patented in 1975 and came into medical use in 1985), the researchers decided to analyse a large medical database to determine if taking this drug reduced the incidence of Parkinson’s.

Using the IBM Watson/Truven database, the investigators found that terazosin (or similar drugs) treatment reduced the risk of having any of the 79 Parkinson’s-related diagnostic codes in your medical file by 20% – relative risk = 0.78 (95% CI: 0.74–0.82).

scienceofparkinsons.com/201...

[Zella23 in reply to pvw2]

Thanks for that research - I think I understood some of that when I looked it up.

[pvw2 in reply to pvw2]

Microbleeding in the brain might be related, but the possibility looks more related to healing cells than blood pressure.

[MarionP]

It promotes cell growth by some undefined amount, helping supply the cell with energy needed for all its processes, as far as it goes that is. Not sure how significant and effectiveness will necessarily vary according to individual case specifics.

Of course, the subjects were all rats, mice, and stem cells in a dish.

The endpoint of the mechanism resulted in some increase in dopamine production. The degree of improvement lacks meaningful quantification and definition of terms, there is a potential large universe of variable terms and hidden summation assumptions to define and unravel, the authors failed to do so (because they couldn't, so they substituted arbitrary summary cover terms at many points in the study and discussion.

That's a very very very long way from saying there is some justifiable and safe clinical benefit in humans.

What we have here is a fishing expedition to see if there is some way the business end can find some more profits to squeeze out of a "re-purposing" campaign, or create enough flimsy information to get it approved by a willing industry/government revolving door of regulatory authorities (otherwise known as revolving door people doing their time with the government end of things while on sabbatical from their normal positions in industry working to produce endpoint sales for the benefit of the bottom line...here and there you'll find a dedicated scientist but even they have to...or maybe just want to...eat).

Just a step away from basic research, i.e., discovering that fire helps cook food thereby increasing nutrition, and assuming is is therefore a way now to power your electric vehicle. Sort of like the detective Columbo stories work. No need for the entire judicial process, just skip right to the sentencing.

A long stretch to create all this when physicians can bypass all of that by just prescribing off label now to please themselves or their patients (assuming health insurance companies will pay for it). Doing the science the right way will take many years. They can put it in their patients today if they want to go off on their own tangent, which is another way for saying they can do their treatment with drugs already in use with no further justification, otherwise known as individual medical practice prerogative. Of course, don't blame them when the postural hypotension it is already known to cause makes you fall down and bust your calcium-deprived old bones or start a stroke or break your hip, or you get assorted anti-cholinergia problems, heat stroke or constipation anti-cholinergics cause. I mean, who needs real life stage 2 and stage 3 studies, life's just a gamble anyway, right? So just find a doc willing to experiment around with you, it's actually allowed. Just don't forget to sign that waiver if they insist, their professional liability insurance premium rates are bad enough as it is.