I originally posted this in Forum Feedback because the subject came up there. I was asked to re-post it here. Please understand the possibility of new medicaitons from the clinical studies I found is sheer speculation on my part, and anyone who thinks this applies to them should ask a neurologist. Or take a neurologist some printout and ask what it means.

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Hi Ellie,

I just thought of something you might want to ask your doc about. You mentioned seizures connected with the withdrawal of caffeine. Surprisingly, researchers have found that people who drink coffee are somewhat less likely to develop Parkinson's Disease (PD), and that caffeine works on one kind of "A" receptor cells in the brain. They set about finding a drug for PD that would work on similar receptor cells, and sure enough, if you block the A2A receptors (name of the brain chemical or neurotransmitter is adenisone), the overall level of dopamine (which we lack) in the brain goes up. There's an experimental drug called istradefylline (or KW-6002 as its experimental name) which is an A2A receptor antagonist (blocker, sort of). I have been on istradefylline for about 2 years as a participanat in the clinical studies, and at least in my case, it has a moderately beneficial effect on my ability to move. I was thinking your doc might have a clue as to whether something like this would help you, and if not, maybe ask another neurologist.

Hmmm... I just searched PubMed ( www.pubmed.org ) on "A2A receptor antagonist and seizure" (without the quotes) and found several articles showing that they're trying out this type of drug on rats at NIH (National Institutes of Health). Also just googling on the same phrase yields some very interesting results.

Hope this is of interest.

Jaye
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You can learn to use the public medical library (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/) with simple tutorials they have there for free. You can look up words in a medical dictionary at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/mplusdictionary.html.
Don't be medically in the dark. Learn and be in charge of your life (no one else is that into it, LOL).

Jaye