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ALZHEIMER DISEASE

Blood–brain barrier pathology linked to epilepsy in Alzheimer disease

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 16, page 66 (2020)Cite this article

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Epileptiform activity is a common occurrence in the brains of people with Alzheimer disease (AD), but the underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. A new study published in Science Translational Medicine identifies a possible EEG-based indicator of subclinical seizure activity in patients with AD and suggests a role for blood–brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction in AD-associated epilepsy.

A team led by Alon Friedman, who holds positions at Dalhousie University in Canada and Ben-Gurion University in Israel, examined EEG recordings from 39 individuals: 16 with AD, 12 with mild cognitive impairment and 11 age-matched controls. The recordings revealed a specific pattern of transient slow brain activity, termed paroxysmal slow wave events (PSWEs), that was more frequent in the patients with AD than in the other two groups. The number of PSWEs per minute correlated with the degree of cognitive impairment.

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References

Original article

  • Milikovsky, D. Z. et al. Paroxysmal slow cortical activity in Alzheimer’s disease is associated with blood–brain barrier dysfunction. Sci. Transl. Med. 11, eaaw8954 (2019)

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Related article

  • Sweeney, M. D. et al. Blood–brain barrier breakdown in Alzheimer disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Nat. Rev. Neurol. 14, 133–150 (2018)

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  1. Nature Reviews Neurology http://www.nature.com/nrneurol/

    Heather Wood

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  1. Heather Wood
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Correspondence to Heather Wood.

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Wood, H. Blood–brain barrier pathology linked to epilepsy in Alzheimer disease. Nat Rev Neurol 16, 66 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-019-0304-z

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