Carbamazepine
Carbamazepine is an anticonvolusant.
treating epilepsy
Have you ever had a twitch? If you have then you've experienced an uncontrolled muscle contraction also know as a convulsion! This occurs because your nervous system is repetitively firing signals. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that presents as epileptic seizures. Similar to a twitch these are a result of a sustained and repetitively firing nervous system. Carbamazepine is an anticonvulsant working to control convulsions like this by blocking sodium channels, one of the methods your nervous system uses to send these messages.
Did you know: Epileptic seizures can also be non-convulsive. These types of seizures are associated with a loss of consciousness. Carbamazepine is only effective in the treatment people with epilepsy who experience convulsive seizures.
treating biopolar disorder
Carbamazepine is actually listed on the WHO's essential medicine list twice! It is also used as a mood stabiliser. This is a type of medication which is used to treat bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder is classified as a mental health disorder and is experienced by approximately 1.8% Australians aged 16-85 years. People with bipolar disorder go through periods of depression (characterised by sadness, irritability, lack of energy), episodes of mania (the opposite of depression - good mood, over confident, full of energy), and times where their mood is more stable in between. Bipolar can have serious effects on a person's study, work and personal relationships.
Scientists know that bipolar disorder results from changes in the levles of chemicals inside the brain including noradrenaline, serotonin and dopamine. Carbamazepine is thought to help balance the chemical serotonin.
How does it work?
A synapse, where two neurons meet.
Neurons are cells within the nervous system that transmit information to other cells. The synapse is the space between two neurons. It consists of a pre-synaptic neuron (neuron before the synapse) and a post-synaptic neuron (neuron after the synapse). In the synapse, neurons use chemical messengers called neurotransmitters to send information from the pre-synaptic neuron to the post-synpatic neuron. This process informs downstream biological functions and neurotransmitters play lots of roles, so many we don't even know them all yet!
Serotonin is just one of the neurotransmitters neurons use to "talk" to each other. The messages it is used to send are related to modulating mood, reward, memory, learning and physiological processes such as vomitting.
Carbamazepine is thought to work as a serotonin releasing agent. Normally, serotonin is released into the synapse by the pre-synaptic neuron, where it binds with receptors on the post-synaptic neuron. After some time, serotonin is taken back up into the pre-synaptic neuron through a process called re-uptake. Carbamazepine causes more serotonin to be released, resulting in serotonin being in the synapse for longer, and having a prolonged effect.
A lot more work still needs to be done on understanding how and why people get bipolar disorder, and developing new medicines to treat it. Could you see yourself being involved in important work like this one day?