UCC study takes 'significant step' towards early warning system to predict epilepsy seizures
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Research which could help predict epilepsy seizures is a “significant step” towards developing a warning system for patients.
The study, from researchers at University College Cork and Yale University, uses brain activity patterns to predict seizures. It has found a pattern of brain activity which occurs before a seizure happens.
Epilepsy is a chronic noncommunicable disease of the brain, affecting about 40,000 people in Ireland and 50m worldwide.
Study lead and lecturer at the Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience at UCC Dr Cian McCafferty said the team wanted to find out why people lose consciousness when they have epileptic seizures.
“Absence seizures, also called petit mal, are seizures defined by a loss of consciousness so they are the optimal way to research this,” he said.
“Our study found that some neurons might be more important than others in making a seizure happen. We also found that gradual changes in electrical activity in the brain start up to a minute before a seizure.”
He said people with epilepsy have said not knowing when the seizure might occur is one of the most difficult parts of living with this disease.
Researchers discovered that loss of consciousness during seizures is caused by four types of neurons.
They found neurons consistently fall into one of four functional groups during absence seizures, suggesting they are playing different roles in the initiation and persistence of seizures.
It was previously thought all neurons in a brain area had similar activity patterns during a seizure, giving no obvious target for therapeutic interventions, the researchers said.
“The four distinct patterns of activity discovered in this study suggest that loss of consciousness in seizure may be caused by specific subsets of neurons, which could be targeted with pharmaceuticals to reverse this loss,” the study found.
This study, ‘Decreased but diverse activity of cortical and thalamic neurons in consciousness-impairing rodent absence seizures’, also demonstrated the changes which took place before a seizure was initiated.
Electrophysiological changes were noted between 40 to 60 seconds before a seizure.
Vice-president for Research & Innovation at UCC Professor John Cryan congratulated Dr McCafferty and the team, saying the findings are “impactful and translationally relevant”.
He added: “[This] could transform the lives of people living with the neurological disorder and their families.”
The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders & Stroke.
The study, led by Dr McCafferty at University College Cork and Dr Hal Blumenfeld at Yale University, was published on Tuesday in , the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal.