“When healthy we should continue to be the men we vowed
to be become when sickness promted our words”
"Pliny the younger (A.D. 62?-113?)"
“Nature, as we know her, is no saint”
"Ralph Waldo Emerson"
$2 million gift enables UF to establish epilepsy research center
By John Pastor
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Boosted by a $2 million private gift, the University of Florida announced the formation of the B.J. and Eve Wilder Center for Excellence in Epilepsy Research at a press conference on Tuesday (2/3) at UF's McKnight Brain Institute. The center will promote basic research on epilepsy, a condition of the central nervous system characterized by recurrent seizures. More than 2 million people in the United States have experienced an unprovoked seizure or have been diagnosed with epilepsy, according to the National Institutes of Health.
"I think the thing (that helped me early in my career) was that I had a year of research experience and I was not being called out to dothe clinical responsibilities that of course we must do," said Wilder, an emeritus professor of neurology and neuroscience at UF's College of Medicine and a world leader in the development of new drugs to help epilepsy patients. "When I had the opportunity to do something with (Executive Director) Bill Luttge and the McKnight Brain Institute, I thought of an idea of maybe creating a center so that a young faculty member could really devote much of his time to doing research without being encumbered with the constant clinical responsibilities that we all have."
The $2 million gift, which will be matched by the state, will help establish a term professorship along with two, one-year postdoctoral fellowships. The intent is to enable the candidate selected for the professorship to concentrate on basic research, free of many clinical responsibilities. The professorship will transfer to a new candidate in three or four years, refreshing the position and helping the research pursuits of another scientist.
"In accepting this gift, we recognize that we are also accepting the challenge that it catalyzes, namely, the establishment of UF's campuswide center of excellence for research on the causes, consequences, prevention and improved treatment for epilepsy," Luttge said. "All of us recognize this lofty goal will require considerable additional fiscal resources, so I call upon everyone to look upon the Wilders' wonderful gift as a challenge - a matching goal to fill, not an end in itself, but rather just a beginning."
The funds will establish a framework in which basic and clinicalscientists can interact, leading to a better understanding of epilepsy in children and adults, as well as to the discovery and implementation of new treatments, according to Vice President for Health Affairs Dr. Douglas Barrett. "(This is) a terrific recognition of how private support can have a profound impact on helping the University of Florida take specific action to help patients who suffer from a devastating neurologic disorder - the problem of epilepsy," Barrett said.
Wilder's early research interest was in the basicneurophysiology of epilepsy. Later, because of his commitment to work with epileptic patients, his interest turned to the pharmacology of antiepileptic drugs and to clinical studies to develop new drugs to combat epilepsy. Wilder was involved in the clinical development of all new drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat
epileptic patients between 1975 and 1988. He has authored more than 300 publications, journals, books and monographs on epilepsy, pharmacology and physiology, and he continues to be active in clinical research and education.
Additional research centers currently under the auspices of UF's McKnight Brain Institute include the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury Studies, the Center for Smell and Taste, the Movement Disorders Center and the Comprehensive Center for Pain Research. Each involves teams of scientists and clinicians who work together to make laboratory discoveries they can translate into therapies or technologies that help patients.
UF researchers probe epilepsy drug's effect on scars
By John Pastor
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Giving a common antiseizure drug to patients with scars on their bodies may improve the cosmetic appearance of the scars, scientists at the University of Florida's Evelyn F. and William L.McKnight Brain Institute report in the current issue of Dermatology Online Journal. In a preliminary study, psychiatry researcher Nathan Shapira, M.D., Ph.D., discovered improvements in the physical appearance of scars in patients who received low oral doses of topiramate, a drug usually prescribed for patients with epilepsy. However, the pilot study did not address a possible "placebo effect," which takes place when people show improvement even though they've received an inactive drug or treatment. Topiramate has been used for many years as an antiseizure medication and is already approved by the Food and Drug Administration for that purpose.
The next step in determining whether the drug is useful for scars is to compare patients who receive topiramate with a similar group of patients given an inactive drug, said Shapira, who is a principal in a patent application submitted by the University of Florida for topiramate's use for wound healing. However, the findings suggest the drug holds promise for patients self-conscious about scars from acne, surgery, burns and trauma, he said. The researchers know of no effective oral drug treatments for scars.
"It's interesting to think that a compound that helps calm seizures might have some completely different effect on the body," said Shapira, an assistant professor in the psychiatry department at UF's College of Medicine. "The age of the scars, characteristics like color and height of the scars, and the failure of other types of previous treatments in these patients all argue for the potential of this compound. A scar changing by itself is not likely."
During the study, 10 adults who had discolored or raised scars for at least two years were given 15 milligrams of topiramate orally for one month. Nine of the patients were women. If the patient showed minimal improvement, the dosage was increased to 30 milligrams, less than one-fifth of the standard dosage of the drug when given to patients with epilepsy, Shapira said. Using a standardized scale that measures changes in a medical condition over time, physicians assessed two patients as being "very much improved," four as "much improved" and four as "minimally improved."
In addition, two independent medical reviewers blindly reviewed photos taken of the scars. One medical reviewer correctly arranged the before- and after-treatment pictures for all study participants, and the other reviewer correctly arranged the pictures for nine of 10 subjects.
"I hope the publication of these findings spurs an independentevaluation," said Arthur Huntley, M.D., a dermatology professor at theUniversity of California, Davis and publisher of Dermatology Online Journal. "Scars do improve with time, but the findings presented by Shapira were much better than would be expected. I hope his results can be verified by others. It's too early to conclude that topiramate really works for scars, but the findings do merit a double-blind trial."
Adverse effects were generally mild, commonly relating to language problems, such as word-finding, and sleep disturbances. The preliminary results stem from investigations by McKnight Brain Institute psychiatrists into Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disease characterized by a patient's short stature, learning disability and insatiable appetite, and often by obesity and self-injurious behavior.
"We were trying to get an effect on appetite and weight, which we did not see," Shapira said. "But we did see an effect on self injury and what appears to be improved wound healing. After that, we designed a followup study to look at topiramate's effects on skin. This is an example of where you follow the lead of the data. I'm a psychiatrist that happened to notice something that took me to dermatology, a completely different field."
