Alzheimer’s could be treated with epilepsy drug

by LotusFlower | December 8, 2008 at 03:37 pm

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Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common form of dementia and strikes an increasing number of people.

The search to find treatments and cures is on but so far there it has been a fruitless search although some drugs seem to help some patients especially when administered early after onset.

This new research shows that Sodium valporate could help get rid of plaques in the brain that are thought to the cause of the demetia brought on by Alzheimer's disease. This would be a major breakthrough in the fight against this disease.

A drug commonly used to treat epilepsy could help clear the plaques in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, according to researchers at the University of Leeds. The plaques are known to lead to the progressive death of nerve cells in the brain linked to many forms of dementia.

Sodium valproate - which is marketed as the anti-seizure drug Epilim - has been shown by scientists at the University of Leeds to reactivate the body’s own defences against a small protein called amyloid beta peptide, which is the main component of the brain plaques characteristic in Alzheimer’s.

“The fact that we’ve been able to show that a well-established, safe and relatively inexpensive drug could help treat Alzheimer’s is an extremely exciting development,” says lead researcher Professor Tony Turner from the University’s Faculty of Biological Sciences. “We hope colleagues will be able to progress this research with clinical trials in the near future.”