Swartz Barbara E, McDonald Carrie R, Patel Ashok, Torgersen Denise
Hoag Hospital Memorial Presbyterian Epilepsy Center, Newport Beach, CA 92663, USA.
Clin Neuropharmacol. 2008 Sep-Oct;31(5):251-60. doi: 10.1097/WNF.0b013e3181633461.
Previous research has demonstrated that alpha2 agonists improve working memory performances in healthy individuals and in primates with prefrontal lesions. We conducted this study to determine whether the alpha2 agonist, guanfacine, could improve working memory performances in patients with frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) and/or in those with focal epilepsy outside the frontal lobes (ie, temporal lobe epilepsy [TLE]).
Fourteen patients with FLE, 13 patients with TLE, and 10 healthy controls completed immediate and delayed match-to-sample tasks before and after ingestion of 2 to 3 mg of guanfacine.
All 3 groups showed an increase in accuracy on the delayed match-to-sample task, but not the immediate match-to-sample task, following administration of guanfacine. Inspection of the group means revealed somewhat greater benefits for the control and FLE groups relative to the TLE group. Increased accuracy was not associated with slower performances in any group, suggesting that the cognitive benefits of guanfacine did not occur at the expense of increased sedation.
These data suggest that guanfacine improves working memory in patients with FLE and may be a viable treatment for attenuating such deficits in this patient population.
先前的研究表明，α2激动剂可改善健康个体以及患有前额叶损伤的灵长类动物的工作记忆表现。我们开展这项研究，以确定α2激动剂胍法辛是否能改善额叶癫痫（FLE）患者和/或额叶以外局灶性癫痫患者（即颞叶癫痫 [TLE]）的工作记忆表现。
14例FLE患者、13例TLE患者和10名健康对照者在摄入2至3毫克胍法辛之前和之后完成了即时和延迟的匹配样本任务。
在服用胍法辛后，所有3组在延迟匹配样本任务中的准确性均有所提高，但在即时匹配样本任务中未提高。对各组均值的检查显示，相对于TLE组，对照组和FLE组的获益略大。准确性的提高与任何一组的表现变慢均无关，这表明胍法辛的认知益处并非以增加镇静作用为代价而产生。
这些数据表明，胍法辛可改善FLE患者的工作记忆，可能是减轻该患者群体此类缺陷的一种可行治疗方法。
