Italian doctors are seeking new methods for the treatment of epilepsy

Italian doctors are seeking new methods for the treatment of epilepsy
Epilepsy is known since ancient times. Seizures suffered many prominent people such as Paul and Buddha, Julius Caesar and Napoleon, Handel, and Dante, Van Gogh, Nobel, Dostoevsky and others.

The Italian researchers seem to feel a "key" to the brutal treatment of the disease. They discovered the dangerous link between the white calves blood leukocytes / performing protective functions in the body, blood vessels and brain. This relationship is likely, and underlies the origin of "Saint Vitus Dance" - epilepsy. Experiments on mice conducted by doctors Gabriela Constantin and in laboratories Fabene Paolo Verona University, showed that blocking this regard, specific antibody significantly reduces the number of attacks and hinder the development of disease.

This discovery may lead to the renewal of treatment of epilepsy, the journal "Nature Medicine" / "Nature Medicine" /.

Epilepsy - a chronic psychiatric disorder that is characterized by a tendency to recurrent sudden seizures, which are of different types, but the basis of any of them is anomalous, excessive activity of the brain nerve cells, sending nerve impulses / type of electrical discharge / motor to the muscles. To denote strength and duration of seizures doctors usually use terms such as "convulsions," "attacks", "episodes".

Actual number of patients with epilepsy is difficult because many of its victims either do not know about his disease, or hide it. In the United States, according to recent studies, suffered from epilepsy for at least 4 million people, and its prevalence is 15-20 cases per 1000 people. In other countries, these figures probably about the same as the incidence does not depend on sex, race, socio-economic status or place of residence. Some importance, in the opinion of doctors, has a factor of inherited predisposition to the disease. Radical treatment of epilepsy is not yet there, but now with the help of medication could be reduced substantially the number of seizures in 60-80 percent of cases. According to European sources, in Italy, as in the rest of the world, the number of patients with epilepsy is one percent of the population. Of these, one third did not receive any relief from existing medications and to prevent the attacks had to resort to surgical intervention. However, the disease rarely leads to death or of serious violations of physical condition or mental capacity of a patient.

Opening of the Italian doctors may become a turning point in the struggle with epilepsy medicine.