Consideration of acamprosate for treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Author(s): Kast RE, Altschuler EL

Affiliation(s): Department of Psychiatry, University of Vermont, College of Medicine, 2 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401, USA. rekast@email.com

Publication date & source: 2007, Med Hypotheses., 69(4):836-7. Epub 2007 Mar 21.

Publication type:

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal disease of degeneration of motor neurons. There is no known cure or life extending treatment. Much recent work has suggested that a possible cause of ALS is constitutive opening of the calcium pore in glutamate sensitive AMPA channels secondary to a failure of RNA editing that would change a crucial glutamate in the channel to arginine. Here, we point out that the small molecule pharmaceutical acamprosate, usually used as a drug to maintain alcohol abstinence, may block this calcium pore--as do the related molecules endogenous polyamines such as putrescine, cadaverine, spermidine and spermine--and thus might have use in ALS.