Posted on 07/17/2015 12:47:46 PM PDT by Red Badger
FULL TITLE: Quiet that ringing in the brain: New drug promises relief from epilepsy and tinnitus with fewer side effects ===================================================================================================
A new drug may treat epilepsy and prevent tinnitus by selectively affecting potassium channels in the brain, UConn neurophysiologist Anastasios Tzingounis and colleagues report in the 10 June Journal of Neuroscience.
Epilepsy and tinnitus are both caused by overly excitable nerve cells. Healthy nerves have a built-in system that slams on the brakes when they get too excited. But in some people this braking system doesn't work, and the nerves run amok, signaling so much that the brain gets overloaded and has a seizure (epilepsy) or hears phantom ringing (tinnitus). About 65 million people worldwide are affected by epilepsy. The numbers on tinnitus are not as clearcut, but the American Tinnutus Association estimates 2 million people have tinnitus so disabling they have troubling functioning in daily life.
The existing drugs to treat epilepsy don't always work and can have serious side effects. One of the more effective, called retigabine, helps open KCNQ potassium channels, the "brakes" that shut down the signaling of overly excited nerves. Unfortunately, retigabine has awful side effects. Because of this, it's usually only given to adults who don't get relief from other epilepsy drugs.
Several years ago, doctors around the world began reporting infants with severe, brain-damaging seizures. Genetic testing showed that the children with this problem had genetic differences in their KCNQ potassium channels. Most existing anti-seizure drugs don't work for these children, and few want to give babies retigabine because of its side affects, which include sleepiness, dizziness, problems with urination and hearing, and an unnerving tendency to turn people's skin and eyes blue.
Tzingounis began working in 2013 with Thanos Tzounopoulos, a tinnitus expert at the University of Pittsburgh, on a new drug candidate. The drug, SF0034, was chemically identical to retigabine, except that it had an extra fluorine atom. A company called SciFluor had developed SF0034, and wanted to know whether the compound had promise against epilepsy and tinnitus. The two researchers thought the drug had the potential to be much better than retigabine.
The most important question to answer was whether SF0034 works on KCNQ potassium channels the same way retigabine does, and if so, was it better or worse that its parent compound? KCNQ potassium channels are found in the initial segment of axons, long nerve fibers that reach out and almost, but don't quite, touch other cells. The gap between the axon and the other cell is called a synapse. When the cell wants to signal to the axon, it floods the synapse with sodium ions to create an electrical potential. When that electrical potential goes on too long, or gets out of hand, the KCNQ potassium channel kicks in. It opens, potassium ions flood out, and the sodium-induced electrical potential shuts down. In some types of epilepsy, the KCNQ potassium channels have trouble opening and shutting down runaway electrical potentials in the nerve synapse. Retigabine helps them open.
There are five different kinds of KCNQ potassium channels in the body, but only two are important in epilepsy and tinnitus: KCNQ2 and KCNQ3. The problem with retigabine is that it acts on other KCNQ potassium channels as well. That's why it has so many unwanted side effects.
Tzingounis and Tzounopoulos first tested SF0034 in neurons, and found that it was more selective than retigabine. It seemed to open only KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 potassium channels, not affecting KCNQ 4 or 5. It was more effective than retigabine at preventing seizures in animals, and it was also less toxic.The results are promising, both for research and medicine. SciFluor now plans to start FDA trials with SF0034 and see if it is safe and effective in people. Treating epilepsy is the primary goal, but tinnitus can be similarly debilitating, and sufferers would be thrilled to have a decent treatment.
Tzingounis is pleased as well. "This [SF0034] gives me another tool, and a better tool, to dissect the function of these channels," Tzingounis says. "And we need to find solutions for kids--and adults--with this problem," he says.
I’ve added the sound of water through pipes to my tinnitus. I worry about it.
Try this program and listen to it on headphones. I usually do it for 20 minutes and it seems to help. What’s weird is after I while it feels like it’s breaking up blockage in my ear. I want to see if I can somehow record it and put it on an ipod......
http://www.generalfuzz.net/acrn/
Sorry to hear (no pun intended) that.
Hope this new treatment helps.
We’ll include you, and all who suffer from this, in our Prayers tonight.
There’s really a tinnitus Ping List??
If I may ask, were any of your medications Trazodone?
Mine came on like a freight train. Woke up one morning three
years ago to a loud ringing in my ears. Couldn’t sleep it was so loud. 80 hours without sleep put me into the hospital where my doc tried different types of sleeping pills. Gave me one that he assured me would put a horse to sleep for 12 hours, I woke in four.
OHSU in Portland’s tinnitus clinic, after a day of tests, told me that I had one of four of the worst cases in their history.
Ended up with an audiologist in Medford that fit me with
specialized hearing aids to really helped me cope with the
sounds. Worth the $5K, every penny.
Now I get to sleep with some Bourbon and one xanex; good
for 6 hours every night.
I’ve had that same buzzing most of my life, but it’s been getting worse this year.
My luck, they’ll find a cure. But it won’t work if you already have the symptoms. As with Rush Limbaugh.
I’m 72 and had it since I was a teen-ager. Drove diesel tractors for hours every day for years. If I listen, I hear the roar but over the decades my mind has learned to ignore the noise. It would be interesting, however, to rid myself of the constant noise.
No, antibiotics like Ciprofloxacin.
Good grief, how on Earth could anyone take that harridan seriously as a presidential candidate? You have to be certifiably nuts to think she should be in the white house. I despise her husband but at least his voice is not a deadly weapon. I know this country is doomed when I realize that many of the same people who condemn Sarah Palin in every imaginable way are pushing to put that insane, alcoholic screechbox in the oval office and in command of our armed forces. By the way, I will never forgive you for tricking me into listening to two seconds of that.
Looks like he just got dragged out of one of those trash cans he is famous for sliding into.
I just tried this program below wearing good headphones, not the kind you stick in your ear, but cover the ear, and I spent a few minutes really trying to match my tinnitus exactly to the programs frequency then played the ACRN pretty loud and sat listening to it for about 20 minutes. After the 20 minutes something really weird happened. The tinnitus sounds broken up. Before I had a high pitched constant whine, now it sounds like a whine with a bad connection, reception, it sounds faded and broken. So WOW I’m wondering if I keep doing this, will it eventually break it up entirely?
http://www.generalfuzz.net/acrn/
LOL! LOL! I always said the military should do away with waterboarding and replace it with that speech. 3 seconds of that will break anybody LOL! I know it’s absolutely baffling why this woman is even being considered when I wouldn’t even put her in charge of a newspaper route. It really goes to show how the media so completely and utterly controls people, it’s truly amazing how they won’t see something as valid unless CBS or MSNBC validates it for them.
I cannot get the program to do anything when I press the buttons. Turned off pop up blocker too.
Did you turn the volume up? Maybe it’s your browser. I’m using Chrome and it works.
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