L dopa benserazide

In this study, we used samples from an Abnormal Involuntary Movements (AIMs) animal model described in our previous paper [16 (link)]. As shown in Figure 1, juvenile male Wistar rats underwent a unilateral stereotaxic surgery with the injection of 6-Hydroxydopamin (6-OHDA) into the left medial forebrain bundle at post-natal day (PND) 21. Two weeks after surgery (PND 35), the animals were randomly divided into 3 groups and received a chronic treatment (6 times in 2 weeks, intra-peritoneally (i.p.)). The first group was administered with saline (UNT); the second group (L-DOPA) was chronically administered with a solution of L-DOPA methyl ester hydrochloride and benserazide (Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH, Taufkirchen, Germany) in saline (6/15 mg/kg, i.p.), while the third group (L-DOPA + R) was administered L-DOPA/benserazide (6/15 mg/kg, i.p.) and Riluzole (Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH, Germany) dissolved in 1% Tween (6 mg/kg, i.p.). At the end of the chronic treatment at PND 53, the animals were sacrificed two hours after the administration of a final pharmacological treatment. The brain was removed and contralateral (control) and ipsilateral (lesioned) striata were extracted, snapped frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at −80 °C.

Two weeks after stereotaxic surgery, the rats were randomly allocated to 4 groups (n = 12 animals per group) associated to different pharmacological treatments, at the same conditions: the first group was chronically administered (6 times in 2 weeks, intra-peritoneally (i.p.)) with a solution of L-DOPA methyl ester hydrochloride and benserazide (Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH, Germany) in saline (6/15 mg/kg, i.p.). The second group (control) was administered with saline. The third group was chronically administered (6 times in 2 weeks) with Riluzole (Sigma-Aldrich Chemie GmbH, Germany) dissolved in 1% Tween (6 mg/kg, i.p.) and L-DOPA/benserazide (6/15 mg/kg, i.p.). The fourth (6-OHDA-lesioned) group followed the same procedure as group 1 and was used to verify the presence of the lesion by quantification of dopamine (DA) levels in striatal tissue using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to electrochemical detection (ECD).