Recent Progress in Anticonvulsant Drug Research: Strategies for Anticonvulsant Drug Development and Applications of Antiepileptic Drugs for Non-Epileptic Central Nervous System Disorders.
Authors: Dalkara S, Karakurt A Abstract Major advances in antiepileptic drug therapy have been took place since 1950s. In the first period, several antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) such as phenobarbital, diphenylhydantoin, ethosuximide, carbamazepine, benzodiazepines and valproic acid were introduced to epilepsy treatment. After 1990 many new generation drugs (lamotrigine, topiramate, gabapentine, pregabaline, felbamate, lacosamide, levetiracetam etc.) have been developed. These novel AEDs have offered some advantages such as less side effects, fewer drug-drug interactions and better pharmacokinetic properties. But pharmacoresistance and therapeutic failure in 20-25% of the patients remain the main reasons to continue efforts to find safer and more efficacious drugs and ultimately a trea...

Cancer's 'Field Effect' Enables Earlier Detection Of Pancreatic Cancer During Routine Endoscopy
By simply shining a tiny light within the small intestine, close to that organ's junction with the pancreas, physicians at Mayo Clinic's campus in Florida have been able to detect pancreatic cancer 100 percent of the time in a small study. The light, attached to a probe, measures changes in cells and blood vessels in the small intestine produced by a growing cancer in the adjoining pancreas. This minimally invasive technique, called Polarization Gating Spectroscopy, will now be tested in a much larger international clinical trial led by the Mayo Clinic researchers... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)