Huntington’s Disease :: Memantine and riluzole are potential Huntington’s disease drugs

A test using cultured cells provides an effective way to screen drugs against Huntington’s disease and shows that two compounds ? memantine and riluzole ? are most effective at keeping cells alive under conditions that mimic the disorder, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report.

“These drugs have been tested in a variety of Huntington’s disease models and some HD human trials and results are very difficult to interpret,” said Dr. Ilya Bezprozvanny, associate professor of physiology and senior author of the study, available online and published in today’s issue of Neuroscience Letters. “For some of these drugs conflicting results were obtained by different research groups, but it is impossible to figure out where the differences came from because studies were not conducted in parallel.