Adding vitamin C to certain drugs can help them penetrate the brain and may improve treatment of neurological disease.

Many medicines that could potentially help in diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy are limited by their inability to reach the brain. That's because the brain is protected from 'foreign' substances by a natural barrier - the blood-brain barrier. But researchers at the University of Ferrara, Italy, may have found a way through, using vitamin C.

They attached vitamin C to a drug that could be used to treat epilepsy but cannot, alone, reach the brain. Mice with epilepsy showed no improvement when treated with the drug but when vitamin C was attached, there was a significant reduction in seizures. The researchers think this works because vitamin C does penetrate the brain through vitamin C 'transporters' found in brain tissue. When a drug is linked to vitamin C, they can use the transporters as a hook to pull them through the blood-brain barrier.

More research is needed before this approach can be tried in humans. But it has huge potential for making effective drugs for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and epilepsy.

Source

Journal of Medicinal Chemistry January 31 2002 / online edition December 21 2001