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A five-year, $3.1 million grant to check preventive methods for sudden sudden dying in epilepsy (SUDEP) has been awarded to UTHealth Houston by the Nationwide Institutes of Well being (NIH) Nationwide Institute of Neurological Issues and Stroke.
Nuria Lacuey Lecumberri, MD, PhD, affiliate professor within the Division of Neurology with McGovern Medical Faculty at UTHealth Houston, is principal investigator of the research, which builds upon her years of analysis analyzing respiration throughout epileptic seizures and the localization of mind areas concerned in respiration regulation.
SUDEP is a devastating complication of epilepsy and a number one explanation for untimely dying in sufferers with power uncontrolled epilepsy. Most assaults happen after a generalized convulsive seizure that results in respiratory arrest, and sufferers are usually present in mattress, mendacity flat on their stomachs. But, regardless of the foremost influence on life expectancy in these sufferers, no focused SUDEP preventive methods presently exist. It happens extra typically in sufferers ages 21 to 40 in comparison with different age teams, in response to the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
“The aim of this analysis is to extend the understanding of mind respiratory management with the aim of utilizing neuromodulation to boost respiration after generalized convulsive seizures,” mentioned Lacuey, who sees sufferers at UTHealth Houston Neurosciences. “Identification of respiratory mind websites able to stimulation-driven respiration enhancement will assist us develop new and revolutionary neuromodulation approaches for ambulatory SUDEP prevention.”
Most SUDEP is because of post-convulsive central apnea, in response to earlier analysis that analyzed sufferers who died whereas being monitored in hospital epilepsy items. Crucially, a three-minute post-convulsive “window of alternative” was recognized, past which the lethal cascade of respiratory and cardiac failure takes place.
By advancing present understanding of forebrain respiration networks, Lacuey believes her group can develop neuromodulatory, or nerve-stimulating, methods for respiratory facilitation and apnea rescue which will forestall SUDEP throughout this crucial time window.
They hope to realize a greater understanding of forebrain modulation of respiration by utilizing anatomically exact, intracranial stereotactic electroencephalography (SEEG) knowledge that may decide optimum stimulation paradigms to boost respiration.
The translational influence of those outcomes will set the stage for bigger scale medical trials of respiration modulation as potential anti-SUDEP remedy, utilizing central apnea to set off responsive neurostimulation in people who find themselves at larger threat of SUDEP. This work may also present insights into potential remedy of central apnea related to different ailments, equivalent to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s ailments, weight problems, coronary heart failure, and stroke.
Any SUDEP prevention technique requires profitable rescue from such respiratory arrest throughout this crucial time window, and sadly, there aren’t any efficient methods for SUDEP prevention. This mission identifies neuromodulation approaches for respiratory rescue that can support within the design of SUDEP preventive interventions.”
Nuria Lacuey Lecumberri, MD, PhD, Affiliate Professor, Division of Neurology with McGovern Medical Faculty at UTHealth Houston
The analysis is funded by NIH Grant No. R01NS133743. UTHealth Houston investigators contributing to the mission embody Samden Lhatoo, MD; Sandipan Pati, MD; John Mosher, PhD; and Yuri Dabaghian, PhD, all with McGovern Medical Faculty, and Xi Luo, PhD, with UTHealth Houston Faculty of Public Well being.
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