Epilepsy & Treatment

Inappropriate accumulation of iron in the dopaminergic region of the brain has been associated with Parkinson’s disease. Deferiprone is a selective, orally active iron chelator which has been used in several clinical trials designed to monitor its efficiency in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. An improvement of both motor and mental performance has been observed in several patients. During such treatment, a decrease in the iron content of substantia nigra was observed using MRI. Unfortunately, deferiprone is associated with agranulocytosis, which occurs in a small percentage of patients. This necessitates weekly recording of white cells counts, which would not be ideal in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease patients. Over the past eight years we have been developing deferiprone analogues which are orally active, cross the blood brain barrier and (to the best of our knowledge) lack the agranulocytosis side effect. The properties of this molecular class will be discussed at the conference.