Severe epilepsy is very difficult to treat, but an experimental approach involving implanted stem cells in the brain represents a groundbreaking way to potentially stop seizures for good.
Carried out by researchers at Texas A&M University, the technique has yet to be tried on human subjects, but has proven highly successful on rats. Rats given the implants suffered 70 percent fewer seizures than those without. That figure could drop further with additional research.
The investigation is the first study of its kind. It demonstrated that grafting certain cells derived from human-induced pluripotent stem cells into the brain can help alleviate seizures, as well as improve brain function. The work targets temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), the most common type of epilepsy in which seizures originate from the brain’s hippocampus. TLE is a non-genetic form of epilepsy, often resulting from an incident such as a traumatic head injury, brain infections, or fever-related seizures during childhood.