Levodopa, a direct precursor of dopamine, is the main medication for Parkinson's disease. Patients are treated with "synthetic" levodopa in different doses or combinations in tablets of Sinemet, Madopar and Stalevo.

 

The largest natural source of levodopa is Mucuna, a legume (such as common beans, peas, lentils, peanuts).

 

Extracts from the variety of Mucuna pruriens, especially the seeds, display a very interesting biochemical profile. These have been used for three thousand years in more than 200 recipes from India medicine.

 

Extract of mucuna seed powder contains large amounts of levodopa and a little serotonin and nicotine along with other ingredients that are only partially known. In the treatment of Parkinson's disease such extracts seem to be more effective and less toxic than the synthetic preparations (26).

 

FURRY BEAN GROWING IN THE TROPICS

Mucuna pruriens is a kind of "hairy" or furry bean, native to Southeast Asia, especially the plains of India, but also widely distributed in tropical regions of Africa and the Americas (particularly in the Caribbean).

The wide dissemination of the plant explains its variety of names, depending on the location: velvet beans, cowhage, itch bean, picapica, Fogareté, Kapikachu, sea bean, deer eyes, yerepe, Atmagupta, nescafe, chiporazo.

 

A SHRUB AS A VINE

This annual plant grows as a climbing shrub with long tendrils that enable it to reach more than fifteen feet in height.

Young plants are almost completely covered by a diffuse orange hair that disappears as they age.  It grows or is cultivated as fodder to enrich the soil (adding a lot of nitrogen) or for its medicinal qualities.

 Since its discovery (27), in 1937, and due to its high content of levodopa, interest has grown and now it is produced in much larger quantities.

 

ITS FLOWERS ARE POLLINATED BY BATS

 

The velvet bean leaves are of the trifoliate type, with leaflets of 5 to 12 cm (4 in.) in width and 7-15 cm (3-5 ") long.

The white or purple flowers are in axillary racemes up to 32 cm long. They are self-fertile, though in some places they are pollinated by bats which, while trying to eat nectar of the plant, carry pollen from flower to flower in their ears (28).