Seizure treatment gets better

U.S. scientists say a naturally occurring brain protein might be the basis for a promising epilepsy treatment without side effects.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers discovered the drug valproic acid, or VPA, boosts the amount of the protein neuropeptide Y in the brain by about 50 percent. What`s more, they found the drug increased the protein in only two parts of the brain -- the thalamus and hippocampus -- areas associated with epileptic seizures. The neuropeptide Y levels in other parts of the brain were unaffected.

VPA has been a mainstay in treating epilepsy, although how it suppressed seizures was a mystery.

Discovering that VPA triggers an increase in neuropeptide Y suggests a possible way to stimulate the brain to quell seizures: increase the amount of neuropeptides in the brain.

The researchers -- John Huguenard, associate professor of neurology and postdoctoral neurology scholar Julia Brill -- are exploring other ways to trigger production of the peptide and prolong its action.

The study appeared in the June issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Esa Space Telescope is Cold-Tested

PARIS, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency says its Planck space telescope has been successfully tested in a cold vacuum.

The telescope was removed last week from the Large Space Simulator at the European Space Research and Technology Center in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, after a 2-week test in temperatures to minus 178 degrees Celsius.

The ESA said the test is an important milestone toward the telescope`s launch in 2008.
Once in space, Planck will investigate cosmic background radiation -- the remnants of the Big Bang that occurred more than 14 billion years ago. The telescope will make observations in the far-infrared spectrum, which requires using super-cooled instruments.

'Central to this test is exposure of the mirrors and their structural frame to a very cold vacuum', said ESA scientist Philippe Kletzkine. 'The telescope is built at room temperature and then cooled to way below the freezing point. Even though the materials were chosen carefully, this makes each individual component of the telescope shrink to some small, but not negligible, extent.

'We need to know whether the resulting changes in shape match our predictions. We have to be spot on, so the mirrors line up properly.'