Cilostazol in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative diseases. The conventional treatment for PD has included dopaminergic treatment as Levodopa\\carbidopa or dopamine agonists, anti-cholinergics, MAOI, catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT) inhibitors, and amantadine. Although these options have been found to be effective, they could only improve the disease symptoms, but do not modify the disease progression. Hence, researchers have focused on developing disease-modifying agents to stop or slow the progression acting as neuroprotective agents. Since the inflammation and oxidative stress play an important role in the pathophysiologic progression of PD, recent studies have investigated the mitigation of the disease pathology through anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant agents. Cilostazol has been found to have anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and neuroprotective effect, and has been evaluated through two animal studies to prove that it possess these effects through dampening NF-κB, and its downstream effectors including TNF-α and IL-1β, reversing the activation of glycogen synthase kinase-3 β (GSK-3β), a pivotal effector in neuronal apoptosis, contributing in preserving dopaminergic neuron integrity clarifying the enhance motor activity, activating nuclear factor erythroid-related factor 2/ heme oxygenase 1 (Nrf2/HO-1), suppressing High mobility group box 1 protein/Toll-like receptor 4 (HMGB1/TLR4) axis, and upregulatig Phosphoinositide 3-kinases/ Protein kinase B (PI3K/Akt) besides mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibition. Hence, Cilostazol might be a potential candidate to improve the clinical outcome in PD patients.