Young stroke patients who have a seizure following their diagnosis are two and a half times more likely to develop dementia than patients who don’t experience seizures, according to a new study by Penn State College of Medicine researchers. They said their results warrant further study into whether monitoring and treating young stroke survivors — those 60 years old and younger — for seizures can slow or prevent dementia onset and progression.
Experts recently found reduced brain volumes in pediatric patients who had previously sustained serious head injuries. New work published in Brain details how researchers concluded that both gray and white matter volumes decrease relative to head size during adolescent development.
During the first 20 months since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Bologna, PWE had a doubled risk of COVID-19 hospital admission compared to a matched control population. Conversely, epilepsy did not represent a risk factor for COVID-19-related death.
A Summer Sale at the CURE Epilepsy Store, expanding the Understanding Epilepsy resource section of our website, and more in this CURE Epilepsy Update.
Working memory deficits are prevalent in childhood epilepsy. Working memory processing is thought to be supported by the phase of hippocampal neural oscillations. Disruptions in working memory have previously been linked to the occurrence of transient epileptic activity. This study aimed to resolve the associations between oscillatory neural activity, transient epileptiform events, and working memory in children with epilepsy.
SUDEP
Researchers have highlighted the similarities between SUDEP and Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) but perinatal risk factors such as those identified for SIDS, have not been assessed previously for SUDEP.
Prolonged and repetitive cycles of pharmacological coma, with midazolam or other general anaesthetics, is often the mainstay for seizure control in febrile infection-related epilepsy syndrome (FIRES). Here we present our experience of enteral lorazepam as an effective weaning substitute in midazolam-dependent patients.
The recurrent p.R1636Q variant represents one of the most common causes of early-onset SCN1A-related epilepsies with separate treatment and prognosis implications.
Genetics
We collated all the genes associated with all types of seizures/epilepsy in all species, and quantified the supporting evidence for each gene, by manually screening ~10,000 publications, and by extracting data from existing databases.
