Tan Jeff S, Lin Faith, Tanouye Mark A
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Division of Neurobiology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Brain Res. 2004 Sep 10;1020(1-2):45-52. doi: 10.1016/j.brainres.2004.05.111.
Human seizure disorders are a major health concern due to the large number of affected individuals, the potentially devastating consequences of untreated seizure occurrences, and the lack of an effective treatment for all patients. Although anticonvulsants have proven very helpful in treating seizures and remain the best option available for treatment, not all afflicted individuals respond to medication and many only do so in unique drug combinations or at the cost of adverse side-effects. Therefore, new and more effective anticonvulsants are continually sought after to combat this illness. In this study, we present results which offer the possibility of using Drosophila bang-sensitive (BS) mutants as a tool to screen anticonvulsants. By feeding the BS mutants a known anticonvulsant, potassium bromide, we have demonstrated that the drug dramatically reduces the seizures of bang senseless, the most severe of the BS mutants. This methodology suggests that the Drosophila system can potentially be a powerful instrument for assaying and testing new compounds with anticonvulsant properties.
人类癫痫疾病是一个重大的健康问题，这是因为受影响的个体数量众多、癫痫发作若不治疗可能产生毁灭性后果，且缺乏针对所有患者的有效治疗方法。尽管抗惊厥药物已被证明对治疗癫痫非常有帮助，并且仍然是现有的最佳治疗选择，但并非所有患病个体对药物都有反应，许多人只有在使用独特的药物组合时才有反应，或者要承受药物副作用的代价。因此，人们一直在不断寻找新的、更有效的抗惊厥药物来对抗这种疾病。在本研究中，我们展示了一些结果，这些结果提供了将果蝇对“bang”敏感（BS）突变体用作筛选抗惊厥药物工具的可能性。通过给BS突变体喂食一种已知的抗惊厥药物——溴化钾，我们证明了这种药物能显著减少最严重的BS突变体“bang senseless”的癫痫发作。这种方法表明，果蝇系统有可能成为一种强大的工具，用于分析和测试具有抗惊厥特性的新化合物。
