New Epilepsy Treatment May Prevent Seizures with a Pill

There may be a new way for those with epilepsy to suppress seizures. Researchers may have created a new treatment for drug-resistant epilepsy that allows someone to take a pill in order to keep a seizure at bay.

Epilepsy affects around 50 million people worldwide. Unfortunately, around a quarter of these cases are resistant to conventional treatments. Yet this new treatment method could provide some relief to those who cannot be treated conventionally.

So how does the new method work? It combines genetic and chemical approaches to suppress seizures without disrupting normal brain function. The technique was demonstrated in rodents, but could potentially be used in humans with the use of a simple pill.

"First, we inject a modified virus into the area of the brain where seizures arise," said Dimitri Kullmann, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This virus instructs the brain cells to make a protein that is activated by CNO (clozapine-N-oxide), a compound that can be taken as a pill. The activated protein then suppresses the over-excitable brain cells that trigger seizures, but only in the presence of CNO."

In fact, CNO could be given as a pill in the event that patients could predict when seizures were likely to occur. For example, many people with treatment-resistant epilepsy experience a cluster of seizures; severe seizures are preceded by smaller ones. In theory, a person could take a pill as a preventative measure.

CNO has a half-life of only about a few hours. It also only impacts the pre-treated epileptic parts of the brain.

"After the one-off injections into affected areas of the brain, our new technique would require nothing beyond CNO, administered as an injection or a pill, to suppress seizures when required," said Kullmann in a news release. "This makes it more attractive than alternative forms of targeted therapy such as surgery to remove the brain region where seizures arise, or gene therapy that permanently alters the excitability of brain cells."

The findings could be huge for those suffering from epilepsy. That said, more research will have to be conducted before scientists begin to conduct human trials.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.