Epilepsy drug may help treating Alzheimer’s

A Canadian study finds that a drug that is used to treat epilepsy and bipolar disorder may prove helpful to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers found that valproic acid stopped the development of Alzheimer’s –related brain plaques in mice.

The researchers from the University Of British Columbia And Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute have already found that If VPA is used in the early stages of the disease, it can reverse memory decline.

The study has been published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Weihong Song, who led the study, said: “We found that the drug helped to block plaque formation and prevented brain cell and axon death when it was used at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease in model mice. Similarly, it also improved performance in memory tests.”

The researchers say that VPA prevents brain plaques, as it constrains the activity of an enzyme that produces the neurotoxic protein beta amyloid that serves as the basic part of Alzheimer’s brain plaques.

These findings regarding VPA can prove helpful in the design of clinical trails to test the drug in humans.

“The results are quite exciting, as we have known when this drug should be administered to make most effective, and now we have also known that it works to prevent AD. We are working on a small human clinical trial and its results are expected to be available in the next year,” Song added.