4-aminopyridine

[shoshin]

My walking is continuing to get worse. My neuro wants me to consider 4-aminopyridine.

I am reading up on it, but just wondered if anybody has any experience with this drug or any insights?

It is apparently an old drug which you can get at compounding pharmacies (although some company is trying to make a time-release formula that they can sell for more money). It is a potassium channel blocking agent, which lowers the action potential in neurons, which I think means they work with less effort even if they're demyelinated (or send a stronger signal--I drown a bit in the technical stuff).

So it doesn't stop MS, but it maybe could help me walk better. However, it doesn't seem to work for everyone. The main bad thing (assuming you don't mega overdose) seems to be the potential for seizures.

sho

[shoshin]

Well, I'm not sure it's been completely proven to help anything exactly and it certainly doesn't seem to help everyone. Most of the research seems to be with MS and spinal cord injury and have more to do with motor symptoms (mostly walking) and spasticity, although I did see some stuff on fatigue.

The most recent MS study I came across (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17439905) was an early study more about safety and dosing, but they found some benefit for walking time and lower extremity strength. This is for the new sustained-release version (Fampridine-SR). They didn't find improvement in fatigue or some other functional tests.

But I really don't know.

sho

[cjacks]

Sho

Would this drug stop/slow other sx.s ?

Jo