Folate and Tolazamide: Potential competitive inhibitors of barbiturate by in-silico molecular docking

Abstract

Barbiturates are the first line drugs for treatment of epilepsy for adults and children in the developing world because of its low cost and proven effectiveness. Due to their adverse effects, no effective management of toxicity and difficulty in determining correct dosage, benzodiazepines are preferred over them. It is also used as a recreational drug, thereby contributing to cases of overdose. My present study was to find the inhibitors of barbiturates by in-silico molecular docking. This approach can highlight only competitive inhibitors as molecules in-silico are rigid and do not produce conformational changes in structure by allosteric binding. 450 FDA-approved drugs were docked to active site of barbiturate of Gleobacter ligand-gated ion channel (GLIC). Drug interactions were visualized, literature search was done to bring out the final results. Tolazamide, an oral anti-diabetic drug and 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, active metabolite of folic acid produced desired results. These results should be used clinically for validation.