New epilepsy drug is possible
By John Travis
From San Diego, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting
Epilepsy affects more than 2 million people in the United States alone, and existing medications don’t always safely control the seizures that mark the disorder. A drug mimicking a natural substance in the brain may offer a new therapy.
In the 1990s, Andrey M. Mazarati of the University of California, Los Angeles and his colleagues found that administering a small protein called galanin arrests epileptic seizures in mice. Galanin is a neuropeptide, a molecule used in small concentrations by the brain’s nerve cells.