Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Brivaracetam To Treat Partial Onset Seizures In Adults., Dustin Latimer, David Le, Evan P. Falgoust, Patrick Ingraffia, Alaa Abd-Elsayed, Elyse M. Cornett, Rupin Singh, Joohee Choi, Giustino Varrassi, Adam M. Kaye, Alan D. Kaye, Latha Ganti

School of Pharmacy Faculty Articles

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Seizures are a hyperexcitable, and hypersynchronous imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory factors (E/I imbalance) in neurotransmission, and epilepsy is the recurrent manifestation of seizures within a reasonable time frame and without being attributable to a reversible cause. Brivaracetam is a derivative of the antiepileptic agent, levetiracetam, that is used as adjuvant therapy for focal onset seizures. It was approved by the FDA in 2016 and has shown promising results with minimal adverse effect reactions in clinical trials.

RECENT FINDINGS: Brivaracetam has been used in multiple clinical trials at various dosages in adults that have partial-onset seizures refractory …

Brivaracetam: A Rational Drug Discovery Success Story, Michael Rogawski

Michael A. Rogawski

Levetiracetam, the alpha-ethyl analogue of the nootropic piracetam, is a widely used antiepileptic drug (AED) that provides protection against partial seizures and is also effective in the treatment of primary generalized seizure syndromes including juvenile myoclonic epilepsy. Levetiracetam was discovered in 1992 through screening in audiogenic seizure susceptible mice and, 3 years later, was reported to exhibit saturable, stereospecific binding in brain to a approximately 90 kDa protein, later identified as the ubiquitous synaptic vesicle glycoprotein SV2A. A large-scale screening effort to optimize binding affinity identified the 4-n-propyl analogue, brivaracetam, as having greater potency and a broadened spectrum of activity …