The opioid antagonist naltrexone decreases seizure-like activity in genetic and chemically induced epilepsy models.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

A significant number of epileptic patients fail to respond to available anticonvulsive medications. To find new anticonvulsive medications, we evaluated FDA-approved drugs not known to be anticonvulsants. Using zebrafish larvae as an initial model system, we found that the opioid antagonist naltrexone exhibited an anticonvulsant effect. We validated this effect in three other epilepsy models and present naltrexone as a promising anticonvulsive candidate.

Methods

Candidate anticonvulsant drugs, determined by our prior transcriptomics analysis of hippocampal tissue, were evaluated in a larval zebrafish model of human Dravet syndrome (scn1Lab mutants), in wild-type zebrafish larvae treated with the pro-convulsant drug pentylenetetrazole (PTZ), in wild-type C57bl/6J ac

SUBMITTER: Sturgeon ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8408599 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature