Does epileptic patient hit amino acid useful?

According to a study conducted by Johns Hopkins University, there is an amino acid that can extremely effectively inhibit epileptic seizures in mice In a series of experiments, D-leucine in many foods and bacteria can inhibit persistent epilepsy, which is a very serious state of epilepsy, that is, status epilepticus, which is the most destructive, Some brain lesions may be secondary changes caused by seizures, and the brain tissue presents obvious acute neuropathological changes The therapeutic effect of D-leucine in the treatment of epilepsy is comparable to that of the classical drug diazepam Antipsychotics are commonly used in patients with pain due to convulsions, but they have no side effects Among the federally funded studies, a study published online on June 4, 2015 in neurology of disease showed that the mechanism of action of D-leucine was different from that of all current antiepileptic drugs This finding may bring new hope to nearly a third of epilepsy patients who have recurrent seizures due to drug resistance Adam Hartman, child psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Children Center, assistant professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of medcine, principal investigator of the study In the past 50 years, the treatment of epilepsy has not made great progress; therefore, it is urgent to find a better treatment, especially for thousands of drug-resistant epilepsy patients If this result is finally confirmed in large animals and humans, our research results will bring real hope to patients with recurrent epilepsy As a component of protein, amino acid is the source of energy and a key participant in many biochemical reactions in vivo But so far, the special function of many amino acids in vivo is still a mystery In a recent study, researchers hypothesized that some amino acids may have special effects in the prevention of epilepsy, because they produce some of the same metabolic byproducts as the high fat ketogenic diet High fat ketogenic diet is a kind of adjustment therapy for epilepsy patients whose condition is difficult to be controlled by drugs In the 1920s and 1930s, a diet therapy became the standard method to treat epilepsy, but with the emergence of the first antiepileptic drugs, people gradually stopped using this therapy The late John Freeman, a neuroscientist at Hopkins University, has revived the popularity of this upgraded diet therapy, which has alleviated the pain of countless children with drug-resistant epilepsy However, dietotherapy needs complex calculation, so it is difficult for patients and doctors to strictly abide by it, and dietotherapy is difficult to completely control the disease In the initial experiment, the researchers used L-leucine and D-leucine to pretreat mice The structures of D-leucine and L-leucine are very similar, especially their mirror structures When the researchers used shock therapy to induce epilepsy in experimental mice, the mice pretreated with amino acid performed better than those with placebo The researchers detected a greater current in the mice pretreated with amino acid, which indicated that amino acid had a greater anti epilepsy function To see whether D-leucine and L-leucine can also interrupt the onset of epilepsy, the researchers induced a group of animal epilepsy When the animals began to twitch, they administered the two amino acids in high and low doses, respectively The results showed that L-leucine could not interrupt the onset of epilepsy, while D-leucine effectively stopped convulsion Surprisingly, low doses of D-leucine were effective in suppressing convulsions Then, the researchers compared the efficacy of D-leucine with that of diazepam, a commonly used epilepsy drug, in patients with long-term epilepsy Both preparations can stop the onset of epilepsy, but D-leucine can stop the onset of epilepsy in a shorter time, nearly 15 minutes less than the sedative diazepam In addition, D-leucine treated mice quickly returned to normal behavior, and there was no somnolence, lethargy and other common adverse reactions of epilepsy patients The last part of the project is to detect the interaction between D-leucine and some known neural receptors involved in epilepsy Surprisingly, D-leucine did not interact with the signaling pathway receptors associated with epilepsy Dr J Marie Hardwick, the project leader, and Professor David Bodian, Professor of Microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of public health, said: the results show that the mechanism of D-leucine controlling epilepsy is not the same as other therapies currently known This discovery brings new hope for epilepsy treatment.