Talk:Carbidopa/levodopa

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I think merging these two articles is a bad idea - they're not the same. Levodopa is part of the drug that constitutes Sinemet; Carbidopa is the other half. Together they constitute Sinemet. There's overlap, but they're not the same. This article should discuss WHY this combination is useful in treating parkinson's disease. The answer, by the way, is that dopamine has bad side effects when administered systemically. We don't want to simply give people dopamine because they'd have severe dyskinesic side effects. Besides, the blood-brain barrier is impermeable to dopamine. However, the blood-brain barrier is somewhat permeable to L-DOPA (aka levidopa), and the body converts levidopa to dopamine. We don't want the body to convert all that levidopa into dopamine systemically (outside the blood brain barrier), which is why we administer the carbidopa at the same time. Carbidopa helps prevent such systemic conversion into dopamine. Administering this combination of drugs allows for lower dosing of levidopa and fewer side effects.

As it stands, this article just needs to be cleaned up a lot and rewritten. Cajolingwilhelm 01:22, 26 January 2007 (UTC)