Posted on 04/01/2025 3:25:51 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
A drug typically prescribed for arthritis halts brain-damaging seizures in mice that have a condition like epilepsy, according to researchers.
The drug, called tofacitinib, also restores short-term and working memory lost to epilepsy in the mice and reduces inflammation in the brain caused by the disease. If the drug proves viable for human patients, it would be the first to provide lasting relief from seizures even after they stopped taking it.
One-third of epilepsy patients do not respond to any known drugs.
Hoffman found a protein called STAT3, key to a cell signaling pathway called JAK, at the center of activity in the seizure-affected mouse brains.
"When we did a similar analysis from brain tissue removed from humans with epilepsy, we found that it was also driven by STAT3," Hoffman says.
In the lab mice, there's usually a lull of weeks of relatively normal time between the brain damage and what the researchers call "reignition" of seizures. If it's not really epilepsy until reignition, what if they tried the drug then? They devised a 10-day course of tofacitinib to start when the mouse brains fell out of their lull and back into the chaos of seizures.
The drug worked better than they could have imagined. After treatment, the mice stayed seizure-free for two months. Collaborators at Tufts University and Emory University tried the drug with their own mouse models of slightly different versions of epilepsy and got the same, seizure-free results.
Roopra's lab has since followed mice that were seizure-free for four and five months. And their working memory returned.
Because tofacitinib is already FDA-approved as safe for human use for arthritis, the path from animal studies to human trials may be shorter than it would be for a brand-new drug.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
The researchers may have found out why epilepsy happens far less often in people who take Xeljanz.
The Mrs. gets that stuff, costs over $3 THOUSAND per month...medicare money.
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Is the CIA are on non-elected government
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