Read more about this disease, some with Classification – Types – Signs and symptoms – Genetics – Pathophysiology – Diagnosis – Screening – Prevention – Treatment and management – Cures and much more, some including pictures and video when available.
Phenytoin sodium is a commonly used antiepileptic. Phenytoin acts to dampen the unwanted, runaway brain activity seen in seizure by reducing electrical conductance among brain cells by stabilizing the inactive state of voltage gated sodium channels. Aside from seizures, it is an option in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia as well as certain cardiac arrhythmias.
It is sometimes considered a class 1b antiarrhythmic.[1]
Phenytoin sodium has been marketed as Phenytek by Mylan Laboratories, previously Bertek Pharmaceuticals, and Dilantin; Australia also Dilantin Kapseals and Dilantin Infatabs in the USA, Eptoin by Abbott Group in India and as Epanutin in the UK and Israel, by Parke-Davis, now part of Pfizer. In the USSR and post-USSR countries, it was/is marketed as ??????? (Diphenin, Dipheninum), PhydumTM in form of tab./inj. by Quadra labs pvt. ltd. in India.
Phenytoin (diphenylhydantoin) was first synthesized by German chemist Heinrich Biltz in 1908. Biltz sold his discovery to Parke-Davis, which did not find an immediate use for it. In 1938, outside scientists including H. Houston Merritt and Tracy Putnam discovered phenytoin’s usefulness for controlling seizures, without the sedative effects associated with phenobarbital.
According to Goodman and Gilman’s Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics,
There are some indications that phenytoin has other effects, including anxiety control and mood stabilization, although it has never been approved for those purposes by the FDA. Jack Dreyfus, founder of the Dreyfus Fund, became a major proponent of phenytoin as a means to control nervousness and depression when he received a prescription for Dilantin in 1966. Notably, he is believed to have supplied large amounts of the drug to Richard Nixon throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dreyfus’ book about his experience with phenytoin, A Remarkable Medicine Has Been Overlooked,[3] sits on the shelves of many physicians[citation needed] courtesy of the work of his foundation. Despite more than $70 million in personal financing, his push to see phenytoin evaluated for alternative uses has had little lasting effect on the medical community. This was partially because Parke-Davis was reluctant to invest in a drug nearing the end of its patent life, and partially due to mixed results from various studies.
It was approved by the USA Food and Drug Administration in 1953 for use in seizures.
Dilantin made an appearance in the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, both as an anticonvulsant and as a mechanism to control inmate behavior.
[tubepress mode=’tag’, tagValue=’Phenytoin’]