Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/38840
Epilepsy Recent research on epilepsy — a disorder of the brain characterized by seizures resulting from overactive electrical signals — revealed new information about how epilepsy affects women’s plans to start a family, and also shed light on the prognosis for children with seizures that can’t be ascribed to any particular type of epilepsy. The results of a German study released in November 2010 detailed recommendations physicians should make when advising women with epilepsy who wish to have children. The researchers reported that three or four out of every 1,000 children born in Germany are the offspring of the approximately 400,000 women with epilepsy. After surveying guidelines and existing literature on conception and pregnancy, medication, and the role of hormones, the authors concluded that women with epilepsy should begin taking prophylactic folic acid before conception and continue through the end of the first trimester. If at all possible, women should not take the antiepileptic drug valproate, as it could lead to birth defects or polycystic ovary syndrome. The researchers also found that some antiepileptic medications may reduce the effectiveness of contraceptives, while oral contraceptives may do the same for antiepileptic drugs. In December 2010, researchers from the Mayo Clinic revealed some good news regarding children and epilepsy at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society. During a 24-year period, researchers identified all children ages 1 month to 17 years with newly diagnosed focal-onset epilepsy in the Mayo Clinic’s home of Olmsted County, MN. Epilepsy in 215 of the children was found to be non-idiopathic. Researchers studied the children’s cases and scrutinized follow-up information for 206 participants for more than 12 months. If a child was found to have a genetic or structural/metabolic cause for the seizures, he or she had symptomatic epilepsy, while a child with unknown seizures was classified as having cryptogenic epilepsy. More than half of the children followed had cryptogenic epilepsy, and they went on to experience much better outcomes than the children with the symptomatic form of the disease. The importance of the study, according to the lead author, lies in the fact that most children whose seizures don’t match a known type of epilepsy outgrow them or are able to control them with medication. Parkinson’s Disease Currently, no cure exists for Parkinson’s disease, which affects neurons that influence muscle movement. The medical community is, however, learning more about the harbingers and triggers of the disease. In July 2010, Neurology detailed the results of a study in which researchers combed Mayo Clinic records to find individuals who had experienced rapid eye movement (REM) sleep behavior disorder at least 15 years before developing either Parkinson’s disease, dementia or multiple system atrophy. Thirteen of the 27 people whose files were scrutinized later developed Parkinson’s disease, some as late as 50 years after first experiencing the sleep disorder with the average span of 25 years between the onset of the two was 25 years. The study gives physicians and patients hope that they may one day be able to slow or halt Parkinson’s disease decades before it develops by recognizing warning signs such as REM sleep behavior disorder. Researchers at Saint Louis University revealed in February 2011 that they found a culprit for the cellular events that give rise to Parkinson’s disease in the form of the brain toxin DOPAL. In results published in PLoS ONE, the research team bolstered the results of earlier work performed at the university that implicated DOPAL in the death of healthy dopamine cells, which led to Parkinson’s disease. The more recent study concluded that DOPAL causes protein clumps called alpha-synuclein to form in the brain, which hinders muscle control and movement by killing the cells that produce dopamine. Now that researchers know what causes the cells to die, they can search for ways to prevent their death. MDNEWS.COM MD NEWS Mid Hudson | 13