Dare Samuel S, Merlo Emiliano, Rodriguez Curt Jesus, Ekanem Peter E, Hu Nan, Berni Jimena
School of Medicine, Kabale University, Kabale, Uganda.
Department of Anatomy, Kampala International University, Kampala, Uganda.
Front Neurol. 2021 Jan 13;11:606919. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2020.606919. eCollection 2020.
Epilepsy is among the most common serious neurological disorders and affects around 50 million people worldwide, 80% of which live in developing countries. Despite the introduction of several new Anti-Epileptic Drugs (AEDs) in the last two decades, one third of treated patients have seizures refractory to pharmacotherapy. This highlights the need to develop new treatments with drugs targeting alternative seizure-induction mechanisms. Traditional medicine (TM) is used for the treatment of epilepsy in many developing countries and could constitute an affordable and accessible alternative to AEDs, but a lack of pre-clinical and clinical testing has so far prevented its wider acceptance worldwide. In this study we used mutants as a model for epileptic seizure screening and tested, for the first time, the anti-seizure effect of a non-commercial AED. We evaluated the effect of the African custard-apple, , which is commonly used as a TM for the treatment of epilepsy in rural Africa, and compared it with the classical AED phenytoin. Our results showed that a stem bark extract from was significantly more effective than a leaf extract and similar to phenytoin in the prevention and control of seizure-like behavior. These results support that constitutes a robust animal model for the screening of TM with potential value for the treatment of intractable epilepsy.
癫痫是最常见的严重神经系统疾病之一，全球约有5000万人受其影响，其中80%生活在发展中国家。尽管在过去二十年中引入了几种新型抗癫痫药物（AEDs），但仍有三分之一接受治疗的患者对药物治疗难治性癫痫发作。这凸显了开发针对替代癫痫诱导机制的新治疗方法的必要性。传统医学（TM）在许多发展中国家被用于治疗癫痫，并且可能成为AEDs的一种负担得起且易于获得的替代方法，但迄今为止，缺乏临床前和临床试验阻碍了其在全球范围内的更广泛接受。在本研究中，我们使用突变体作为癫痫发作筛查模型，并首次测试了一种非商业性AED的抗癫痫作用。我们评估了非洲番荔枝的抗癫痫效果，非洲番荔枝在非洲农村地区通常被用作治疗癫痫的传统医学药物，并将其与经典AED苯妥英进行比较。我们的结果表明，非洲番荔枝的茎皮提取物在预防和控制癫痫样行为方面比叶提取物显著更有效，且与苯妥英相似。这些结果支持非洲番荔枝构成了一个强大的动物模型，用于筛选对治疗难治性癫痫具有潜在价值的传统医学药物。
