Children and young adults with epilepsy are more likely to suffer broken bones, burns and poisonings compared to those without the neurological disorder, new research has found.
The authors say that doctors and other healthcare professionals can use the findings of the research to make children and young adults diagnosed with epilepsy, and their parents, more aware of the risk of injury and to inform existing guidelines on treatment. In particular, they cite the need for more information relating to the safe storage of medicines and the supervision of children while taking their medication to be given by doctors at the time of prescribing and by pharmacists when dispensing prescriptions.
The enzyme GABA transaminase, which is the target of some epilepsy drugs, contributes to sleep loss.
The findings shed light on mechanisms that may be shared between sleep disruption and some neurological disorders. A better understanding of this connection could enable treatments that target both types of symptoms and perhaps provide better therapeutic efficacy.
New research from the University of Adelaide has confirmed that a gene linked to intellectual disability is critical to the earliest stages of the development of human brains.
By looking at patients with severe learning and memory problems, we discovered a gene – called USP9X – that is involved in creating this base network of nerve cells. USP9X controls both the initial generation of the nerve cells from stem cells, and also their ability to connect with one another and form the proper networks.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has detected a higher rate of seizures among children with autism who were fed infant formula containing soy protein rather than milk protein.
The new study showed that children with autism who were fed soy formula had 2.6 times as many febrile seizures as the children fed non-soy formula in the database. That means 4.2 percent of the soy group had a seizure associated with a fever, compared to 1.6 percent of the others.
Researchers have laid the foundation for identifying the underlying molecular mechanism of these troubles and potentially treating them at their biological root.
Wang and colleagues plan to continue studying four genes to determine which lead to the developmental problems such as cleft palate and epilepsy when they are missing. The information gained from this and future studies could inform prenatal testing.