Can Heart Failure Medication Treat ALS?

Medication used for heart failure, like digoxin, could be adapted and used to treat the progressive and paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to a recent study.

Researchers monitored responses in the brain cells of mice with a mutated gene causing development of ALS.
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While examining a stress response protein in the mice, researchers discovered that levels of another protein known as sodium-potassium ATPase, which regulates the electrical charge of brain cells, was much higher in the brains of ALS mice than in healthy mice.

They found that the increase in sodium-potassium ATPase caused the release of inflammatory cytokines, harmful factors that killed motor neurons in the cells.

When researchers executed the same experiment but blocked the buildup of the protein using digoxin, a drug normally used to treat congestive heart failure, they discovered that the motor neurons survived.

“We blocked the enzyme with digoxin,” said Azad Bonni, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and professor and chair of anatomy and neurobiology at Washington University in St. Louis, MO.

“This had a very strong effect, preventing the death of nerve cells that are normally killed in a cell culture model of ALS,” he said.

The complete study is published in the October issue of Nature Neuroscience.

-Michelle Canales

References:

Gallardo G, barowski J, Ravits J, et al. α2-Na/K ATPase/α-adducin complex in astrocytes triggers non–cell autonomous neurodegeneration. Nature Neuroscience. 2014 October [epub ahead of print] doi: 10.1038/nn.3853.

Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom. Heart drug may help treat ALS, mouse study shows. October 26, 2014. http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/27588.aspx. Accessed October 27, 2014.