Functional Study of Inhibitory Neurotransmission in the Human Epileptic Brain.

Epilepsy is a neurological condition that afflicts 1% of the world population. 30% of patients become drug-resistant to classic antiepileptic treatment and only a small percentage, 5%, can undergo a neurosurgical resection of epileptic focus and recover almost completely from symptoms. To date, an imbalance between inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmission has been well accepted as the main root cause of epilepsy. A better understanding of the molecular mechanisms of this can lead to developing new therapeutic strategies. The investigators of the project want to describe the functional alteration of GABA- A receptor, the main actor of inhibitory neurotransmission in the central nervous system and characterize its subunit composition in the epileptic foci of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. The authors, also, want to modulate, by means of selective neuroactive molecules, the function of this receptor to increase the inhibitory tone in the epileptic brain.

NCT Number	NCT05459090
Lead Sponsor	Neuromed IRCCS
Conditions	Drug Resistant Epilepsy
Enrollment	60 participants
Start Date	2022-07-29
Primary Completion	2025-02-28 (estimated)
Study Completion	2027-07-31 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2022-08-02