Epilepsy Drugs May Treat Alzheimer’s
Posted by Admin | Posted in Alzheimer's, Epilepsy, Health News | Posted on 21-12-2009
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According to recent studies, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease can be cured by using drugs that are used to cure epilepsy. Researches show neurons in the brain are protected after treatment with T-type calcium-channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat epilepsy.
Scientists have established a link between Alzheimer’s and epilepsy that could lead to more effective treatment of patients with both diseases. Specialists, including academics from Aberdeen University, have discovered that a protein found in the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers also plays a role in epilepsy. It has been found that to protect brain cells from old age damage and from degeneration, there is no medicine found as off now. Although, if the scientists and the doctors, put a little more effort on it and work on it a little harder, they could come up with more helpful solutions and treatments age-related neurological diseases.
Calcium signaling pathways play a vital role in the survival of neurons in the brain. As the age increases, calcium homeostasis can be disrupted in the brain, which may lead to cognitive and functional decline. It therefore raises the possibility that chemicals able to modulate calcium homeostasis could protect neurons in the brain. Researchers found that the brain cells also showed an increase in viability after treatment with the calcium channel blockers over both the long term and short term.
Earlier the mechanism for the protection of these brain cells were not known to the people. With time the scientists explored the possible protective effects of blockers for T-type calcium channels.
They found that neurons showed an increase in viability after treatment with either L-type or T-type calcium channel inhibitors. Furthermore, neurons in the long-term and short-term cultures were protected, respectively, by L-type and T-type calcium channel blockers, suggesting that more than one calcium-signaling mechanism exists to regulate long- and short-term neuron survival.
The study says that this enhances the chances of using chemicals like calcium channel blockers that are are part of the calcium signaling process which guard and take care of the nerve cells in the brain, and protect these nerve cells in the brain from death.
A study has been done on a mice and notices have been made on the brain cells of the mice and how the treatment effects the mice, more so after the treatment with calcium channel blockers.
As the drug is now clinically available and well tolerated, the confirmation of its therapeutic affectivity in humans could be applied to Alzheimers in a shorter period of time than other drugs being studied.Researchers say that their data provides implications for the use of this family of anti-epileptic drugs in developing new treatments for neuronal injury, and for the need of further studies of the use of such drugs in age-related neurodegenerative disorders.
According to a study, BioMed Central’s open access journal Molecular Neurodegeneration, it was found that neurons in the brain were protected after treatment with T-type calcium-channel blockers, which are commonly used to treat epilepsy.