| abstract |
The present invention is directed to the use of conantokin peptides, conantokin peptide derivatives and conantokin peptide chimeras, referred to collectively as conantokins, having 10-30 amino acids, including preferably two or more .gamma.-carboxyglutamic acid residues, for the treatment of neurologic and psychiatric disorders, such as anticonvulsant agents, neuroprotective agents or analgesic agents. Neurologic disorders and psychiatric disorders include epilepsy, convulsions, neurotoxic injury (associated with conditions of hypoxia, anoxia or ischemia which typically follows stroke, cerebrovascular accident, brain or spinal cord trauma, myocardial infarct, physical trauma, drowning, suffocation, perinatal asphyxia, or hypoglycemic events), neurodegeneration (associated with Alzheimer's disease, senile dementia, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Down's Syndrome, Korsakoff's disease, schizophrenia, AIDS dementia, multi-infarct dementia, Binswanger dementia and neuronal damage associated with uncontrolled seizures), chemical toxicity (such as addiction, morphine tolerance, opiate tolerance, opioid tolerance and barbiturate tolerance), pain (acute, chronic, migraine), anxiety, major depression, manic-depressive illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia and mood disorders (such as bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, dysthymia and seasonal effective disorder) and dystonia (movement disorder), sleep disorder, muscle relaxation and urinary incontinence. In addition, the conantokins are useful for treating HIV infection, ophthalmic indications and memory, learning or cognitive deficits. |