Parkinson's Neurodegenerative Disease: A Case Study

Parkinson's is one of the neurodegenerative diseases and is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s 1. It is reported that in developed countries, nearly one out of 100 people older than 60 years old suffers from Parkinson disease 2. Parkinson is allegedly caused by the damage of brain nerve cells on the substantia nigra. This damage causes the decrease of dopamine in the brain which diminished the ability to regulate the movements, bodies, and emotions 3. The symptoms of the disease include progressive loss of muscle control, slowness of movements (bradykinesia), tremor, postural instability, or catalepsy. Catalepsy is a condition characterized by muscle stiffness, decreased responsiveness to stimuli, a tendency

M. pruriens or velvet bean is reported as a potential plant to lower catalepsy due to the content of L-dopa in the seed 9,10. L-dopa is a precursor of dopamine, able to cross the blood-brain barrier, hence it can help to improve the lack of dopamine 11–14. Various studies have reported the activity of M. pruriens seeds as a promising antiparkinson 15–17. M. pruriens seeds from Indonesia are reported to contain alkaloids, steroids, saponins, tannins and 7.56 to 13.9% of L-dopa 18. Antiparkinson pharmacological studies of M. pruriens seed extract on mice (Mus musculus) showed that the extract at the dose of 200 mg/kg and 400 mg/kg body weight significantly lowered the catalepsy

Synthesis nanoparticles mediated by plant extract is faster, easier and cheaper compared to it mediated by microorganism 19,20,26,27. Various studies have been synthesized magnetite nanoparticles by using an extract of plants resulting magnetite nanoparticles in a variety of shapes and sizes 19,27–30.

M. pruriens seed extract has been reported to be used in the biosynthesis of silver and gold nanoparticles which took place rapidly at room temperature and produced stable nanoparticles in the solution 31,32. The previous study reported that the gold nanoparticle from M. pruriens seed extract could improve motoric disorders in animals induced by 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) significantly even in a lower dose (10 mg/kg body weight) compared to M. pruriens seed extract itself 33. These results suggest that the extract in nanoparticle size provide a better