For the first time people discovered asymptomatic “silent” seizures that were detected in mice with Alzheimer’s disease ten years ago. The discovery potentially reveals new possibilities for the treatment of a disease that affects approximately one in ten people over the age of 65 years, writes “Orthodox”.
A team of neuroscientists, led by Jeffrey Noble from the medical College of Baylor in Texas, reports in Nature Medicine that the seizures are deep in the hippocampus have been reported in two patients with Alzheimer’s disease who volunteered to introduce the probes into their brain. Since scientists have discovered “silent” seizures in mice, it was believed that these electrical discharges occur in the human brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. However, the collection of evidence was a daunting task. These cramps are often unnoticed by patients or physicians.
Although epilepsy is often present in people with Alzheimer’s disease, it is usually absent in most patients who have “sporadic” or a related variant of the disease. “It is very interesting that we were able to move from observations in genetically modified mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease to demonstrate the same phenomenon in patients with verified Alzheimer’s disease,” says noble.
