Breakthrough for Alzheimer’s sufferers
New research has found that doses of a drug designed to treat epilepsy may restore normal brain activity in people with mild Alzheimer’s disease.
The anti-epilepsy drug Levetiracetam is being tested by researchers to see if it helps with disrupted electrical activity in the brain, which has been seen in both epilepsy and dementia.
There’s been increasing evidence in the past decades that seizure-like activity in the brain, experienced by people with epilepsy, also occurs in dementia patients. This is not always seen by doctors, as it is subclinical – it does not always result in a seizure and can only be seen on a brain scan.
"In the field of Alzheimer's disease research, there has been a major search for drugs to slow its progression," said Daniel Press, lead researcher and an Instructor of Neurology in the Cognitive Neurology Unit at BIDMC and an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
"If this abnormal electrical activity is leading to more damage, then suppressing it could potentially slow the progression of the disease."
The study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre took a small group of patients in a three-stage trial. Each visit, their brain was scanned to measure electrical activity, before being injected with either an inactive placebo or the anti-seizure drug.
The drug was administered in two quantities - the lower dose (2.5mg/kg) or higher dose (7.5 mg/kg). Neither patients nor medical professionals knew who was receiving which.
After the injection, the participants underwent more scans and a cognitive test.
The researchers found that in the patients who had been given the drug it did normalise abnormal brain waves and electrical activity, but they added that it had not improved cognitive function.
Press said: “It’s too early to use the drug widely, but we’re preparing for a larger, longer study.”