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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A major discovery about the cause of pediatric epileptic seizures could pave the way for future treatments.
"Parents of children with epilepsy, especially the most severe types of epilepsy, are desperate for a deeper understanding of the causes of the problems and for the development of new treatments," Joseph Gleeson, M.D., director of the Neurogenetics Laboratory at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, was quoted as saying.
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Dr. Gleeson and his team may now have answers for these parents. From their recent study, researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine discovered the convulsive seizures suffered by children with severe pediatric epilepsy are generated in the hippocampus not on the brains surface as expected.
"Researchers had thought that the cause of the seizures in this disease must be the brain surface, since this is the part that looks the most abnormal on brain MRI scans," Dr. Gleeson said. "However, we found that the epilepsy focus was actually deeper in the brain, within the hippocampus, the main memory-forming site."
Researchers say they will explore their findings further to find potential mechanisms and to test new treatments.
SOURCE: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, published online March 16, 2009
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