A new study by researchers at the University of San Francisco in the United States gives hope to the 40% of people with epilepsy who do not respond to treatment. The researchers managed to stop seizures in adult mice suffering from a severe form of epilepsy by transplanting a certain type of cell into their brains.
This disease, which affects more than 60 million people worldwide, manifests itself in seizures with muscle contractions and loss of consciousness often leading to a fall and, sometimes, injury. The study, published in the May 5 journal Nature Neuroscience and supplemented by another study in Cell Stem Cell, raises hope that cell therapies are effective in treating epilepsy as well as other neurological disorders.
Among others, Professor Mark Cook, Head of Medicine at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and researchers from the company NeuroVista in the United States have recently developed a new device consisting of an implant and a housing making it possible to predict at 65% the arrival of a crisis. What upset the daily lives of people affected by epilepsy, the second most common neurological disease after stroke.