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I was under the assumption norepinephrine was the desired neurotransmitter for ADHD patients, but in order to cross the blood-brain barrier, it needed to be att

I was under the assumption norepinephrine was the desired neurotransmitter for ADHD patients, but in order to cross the blood-brain barrier, it needed to be attached to dopamine. This makes the effects of extra dopamine in the system a side-effect, not the feature. But I'm not a doctor, so I could be wrong on that. Could it be that catecholamines have a higher affinity for the presynaptic neurons, so we need the dopamine to push it out, at which point there's a chance the norepinephrine can get into the receptor?

alan-hn 2y ago
Norepinephrine is released from neurons both in the brain and in the peripheral nervous system, it is the drug that crosses the blood brain barrier not norepinephrine. NE may be desirable in some subtypes of ADHD because varying mechanisms can cause the same symptomology, its complicated and we don't know enough yet. Dopamine also plays an important role in attention In no way does dopamine "attach" to NE, so I'm not sure what you're trying to say there There are receptors for catecholamines both pre and postsynaptically, so it is a misstatement to say that they have an affinity for one or the other. The way that synaptic release works is generally through vesicular release but in the case of amphetamines what they do is not only stop the reuptake of dopamine or NE from their synapses but they can also cause efflux out of the reuptake transporter. Generally speaking NE and dopamine are in different neurons but there may be some crossover. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synapse