January 18, 2023

Study Identifies Cause for Mysterious Cases of Epilepsy in Children

Article published by Science Daily

Epilepsy is present in 4% of the population, and is among the most common brain disorders in children. Modern medicine can prevent most seizure recurrences, but approximately 20% of patients do not respond to treatment. In these cases, the reason may originate in patches of damaged or abnormal brain tissue known as “malformations of cortical development” (MCD), which results in a diverse group of neurodevelopment disorders.

Surgical resection or removal of the patch can cure the seizures, and epilepsy surgery to improve neurological outcomes is now a key part of the modern medical armamentarium, but what causes the patches has largely remained a mystery.

Writing in the January 12, 2023 issue of Nature Genetics, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine, collaborating with an international consortium of more than 20 children’s hospitals worldwide, report a significant breakthrough in understanding the genetic causes of MCD.

The team conducted intensive genomic discovery using state-of-art somatic mosaic algorithms developed by the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Brain Somatic Mosaicism Network, of which UC San Diego is a member.

“We tried our best to detect mutations in as little as 1 percent of cells,” said co-first author Xiaoxu Yang, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Gleeson’s lab. “Initially we failed. To solve these problems, we needed to develop novel artificial intelligence methods to overcome barriers in sensitivity and specificity.”

The team ultimately identified 69 different genes carrying somatic brain mutations, the majority of which have never previously reported in MCD.

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