Why is parkinsonism not a feature of human methamphetamine users?
For more than 50 years, methamphetamine has been a widely used stimulant drug taken to maintain wakefulness and performance and, in high doses, to cause intense euphoria. Animal studies show that methamphetamine can cause short-term and even persistent depletion of brain levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. However, the clinical features of Parkinson’s disease, a dopamine deficiency disorder of the brain, do not appear to be characteristic of human methamphetamine users. We compared dopamine levels in autopsied brain tissue of chronic methamphetamine users with those in patients with Parkinson’s disease and in a control group. Mean dopamine levels in the methamphetamine users were reduced more in the caudate (-61%) than in the putamen (-50%), a pattern opposite to that of Parkinson’s disease. Some methamphetamine users had severely decreased dopamine levels, within the parkinsonian range, in the caudate (up to 97% dopamine loss) but not in the putamen. As the putamen and caudate su
