Researchers make progress toward predicting epilepsy seizures

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/aug/07/epilepsy-seizure-drugs-device-progress


Analysis from the European Epilepsiae project suggests that seizures could be anticipated in 10% to 15% of patients. Photograph: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Alamy


The threat hangs over 50 million epilepsy sufferers worldwide, posing an ongoing challenge for researchers working on brain diseases. Although seizures can take many forms they mostly occur without notice. For years specialists have been looking for signs enabling them to anticipate seizures, if only by a few minutes.

In the US firms such as Seattle-based Neurovista are developing an implantable device that continuously analyses electroencephalogram (EEG) data to detect impending seizures. A study is under way in Australia and trials have also started in US universities, using epileptic dogs. The project has received $7.5m in National Institutes of Health funding.

France is involved in similar research. In 1998 a team led by Dr Michel Baulac, a neurologist at La Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris and researcher at the Brain and Spinal Cord Institute (ICM), published a key article in Nature Medicine showing that epileptic seizures do not occur entirely unannounced. "We established that in the preceding five or 10 minutes, changes in brain waves can be detected with a surface EEG," Baulac says. "But these findings could not be used clinically because the sensitivity/specificity ratio was too low, so there were too many false alarms."