Delivery of a compound that suppresses seizures by gene therapy could benefit patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Around one per cent of the US population has epilepsy, most often of the temporal lobe type. It can be hard to treat; surgery to remove affected brain tissue is not always effective so there's a need for new approaches.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have carried out experiments with a new kind of gene therapy on laboratory rats with a view to treating temporal lobe epilepsy. The therapy consists of a brain chemical called galanin, known to suppress seizures, delivered into the brain on a virus 'vector'.

Animals given this treatment became less sensitive to electrical activity that would normally trigger a seizure. It's to be hoped that further research will show that galanin gene therapy could be an effective long-term treatment for people with epilepsy.