Ibopamine
Ibopamine is a sympathomimetic drug, designed as a prodrug of epinine, used in ophthalmology. It induces mydriasis. It also has been investigated for use in the treatment of congestive heart failure.
It acts on D1 and α receptors as an agonist.
Ibopamine was first prepared by Casagrande and co-workers.
Instilled at 2% concentration, ibopamine exhibits several functions at ocular level such as pre- and post-operative mydriatic activity, D1 dopaminergic activity, etc.
Pharmacokinetics
Due to the esterases existed in the aqueous humour and ocular tissues,
ibopamine can be rapidly hydrolysed to epinine which is the active molecule responsible for the mydriatic effect. The epinine, an analogue of dopamine, can stimulate dopamine receptors and to a lesser degree adrenergic receptors. Thus it is believed that epinine is the pharmacologically active moiety. It has been shown that the half-life of ibopamine is short to about 2 minutes in the aqueous humour owing to the fast hydrolysis. So ibopamine can not be found in the aqueous humor after instillation.
