| Autor: |
Bo Zhang, Sharon S McDaniel, Nicholas R Rensing, Michael Wong |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2013 |
| Předmět: |
|
| Zdroj: |
PLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 2, p e57445 (2013) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
1932-6203 |
| DOI: |
10.1371/journal.pone.0057445 |
| Popis: |
Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder and cause of significant morbidity and mortality. Although antiseizure medication is the first-line treatment for epilepsy, currently available medications are ineffective in a significant percentage of patients and have not clearly been demonstrated to have disease-specific effects for epilepsy. While seizures are usually intractable to medication in tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), a common genetic cause of epilepsy, vigabatrin appears to have unique efficacy for epilepsy in TSC. While vigabatrin increases gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels, the precise mechanism of action of vigabatrin in TSC is not known. In this study, we investigated the effects of vigabatrin on epilepsy in a knock-out mouse model of TSC and tested the novel hypothesis that vigabatrin inhibits the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, a key signaling pathway that is dysregulated in TSC. We found that vigabatrin caused a modest increase in brain GABA levels and inhibited seizures in the mouse model of TSC. Furthermore, vigabatrin partially inhibited mTOR pathway activity and glial proliferation in the knock-out mice in vivo, as well as reduced mTOR pathway activation in cultured astrocytes from both knock-out and control mice. This study identifies a potential novel mechanism of action of an antiseizure medication involving the mTOR pathway, which may account for the unique efficacy of this drug for a genetic epilepsy. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
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