Fighting Epilepsy with Nanomedicines-Is This the Right Weapon?

Abstract

Epilepsy is a chronic and complex condition and is one of the most common neurological diseases, affecting about 50 million people worldwide. Pharmacological therapy has been, and is likely to remain, the main treatment approach for this disease. Although a large number of new antiseizure drugs (ASDs) has been introduced into the market in the last few years, many patients suffer from uncontrolled seizures, demanding the development of more effective therapies. Nanomedicines have emerged as a promising approach to deliver drugs to the brain, potentiating their therapeutic index. Moreover, nanomedicine has applied the knowledge of nanoscience, not only in disease treatment but also in prevention and diagnosis. In the current review, the general features and therapeutic management of epilepsy will be addressed, as well as the main barriers to overcome to obtain better antiseizure therapies. Furthermore, the role of nanomedicines as a valuable tool to selectively deliver drugs will be discussed, considering the ability of nanocarriers to deal with the less favourable physical-chemical properties of some ASDs, enhance their brain penetration, reduce the adverse effects, and circumvent the concerning drug resistance.

Keywords: antiseizure drugs; epilepsy; lipid-based nanosystems; nanomedicines; nanotechnology; polymeric nanoparticles.

Figure 1

Structural diversity in chemical structures of the main clinically available antiseizure drugs. They were distributed into three consecutive generations according to their chemical structure and consecutive structural modifications to obtain drugs with improved properties [29,30].

Figure 2

Overview of nanodelivery systems used to formulate antiseizure drugs. Part of the figure was drawn by using pictures from Servier Medical Art. Servier Medical Art by Servier is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (accessed on 31 August 2022)).