Structure-Activity Relationships of Dopamine Agonists

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In the several years since Blaschko (1) suggested neurohormonal activity for dopamine, several types of chemical compounds have been found to possess dopamine-like actions. This review surveys classes of structures in which putative dopamine agonism has been reported, and cites struc­ ture-activity correlations. Detailed stereochemical aspects of dopamine ago­ nists have been addressed elsewhere (2). A serious problem in dopamine structure-activity studies arises from the large variety of animal models and in vivo and in vitro pharmacological assays utilized to assess dopaminergic effects. Comparable test data in the same animal species using the same biological endpoint and the same crite­ ria for assessment of activity/potency are not available for many agents. Thus, it is frequently not possible to make valid comparisons of actions and potencies among compounds described in the literature, and a caveat must be expressed with respect to the validity of many attempted structure­ activity correlations.