Atagabalin

To characterize the time-course of sleep in insomnia patients as well as placebo and concentration-effect relationships of two hypnotic compounds, PD 0200390 and zolpidem, using an accelerated model-building strategy based on mixed-effects Markov models.

Data were obtained in a phase II study with the drugs. Sleep stages were recorded during eight hours of sleep for two nights per treatment for the five treatments. First-order Markov models were developed for one transition at a time in a sequential manner; first a baseline model, followed by placebo and lastly the drug models. To accelerate the process, predefined models were selected based on a priori knowledge of sleep, including inter-subject and inter-occasion variability.

Baseline sleep was described using piece-wise linear models, depending on time of night and duration of sleep stage. Placebo affected light sleep stages; drugs also affected slow-wave sleep. Administering PD 0200390 30 min earlier than standard dosing was shown through simulations to reduce latency to persistent sleep by 40%.

The proposed accelerated model-building strategy resulted in a model well describing sleep patterns of insomnia patients with and without treatments.

Excessive excitability or hyperexcitability of glutamate-containing neurons in the brain has been proposed as a possible explanation for anxiety, stress-induced disorders, epilepsy, and some neurodegenerative diseases. However, direct measurement of glutamate on a rapid time scale has proven to be difficult. Here we adapted enzyme-based microelectrode arrays (MEA) capable of detecting glutamate in vivo, to assess the effectiveness of hyperexcitability modulators on glutamate release in brain slices of the rat neocortex. Using glutamate oxidase coated ceramic MEAs coupled with constant voltage amperometry, we measured resting glutamate levels and synaptic overflow of glutamate after K(+) stimulation in brain slices. MEAs reproducibly detected glutamate on a second-by-second time scale in the brain slice preparation after depolarization with high K(+) to evoke glutamate release. This stimulus-evoked glutamate release was robust, reproducible, and calcium dependent. The K(+)-evoked glutamate release was modulated by ligands to the α(2)δ subunit of voltage sensitive calcium channels (PD-0332334 and PD-0200390). Meanwhile, agonists to Group II metabotropic glutamate (mGlu) receptors (LY379268 and LY354740), which are known to alter hyperexcitability of glutamate neurons, attenuated K(+)-evoked glutamate release but did not alter resting glutamate levels. This new MEA technology provides a means of directly measuring the chemical messengers involved in glutamate neurotransmission and thereby helping to reveal the role multiple glutamatergic system components have on glutamate signaling.