The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7423 p475
21 October 2006

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Energy metabolism pathways offer targets for new epilepsy drugs

Investigations of energy metabolism pathways may lead to the development of a new class of epilepsy drugs, the authors of a paper published online this week claim (Nature Neuroscience Advance Online Publication 15 October 2006).

Mireia Garrigaa-Canut and her colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, argue that since substituting dietary carbohydrates with fats and proteins controls seizures in half of those with drug-resistant epilepsy, energy metabolism pathways might be useful targets for epilepsy drugs.

They found that, in rats, the glycolytic inhibitor 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2DG) reduces the progression of seizures and blocks seizure-induced increases in the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and its receptor. “Our results show that 2DG has anticonvulsant and antiepileptic properties, suggesting that anti-glycolytic compounds may represent a new class of drugs for treating epilepsy,” the authors say. 2DG may represent the founding member of this new class of drugs that work by targeting energy metabolism, they add.