Researchers Identify Potential Approach to Controlling Epileptic Seizures

May 19, 2021

Article, published in Medical Xpress

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University have identified a potential new approach to better controlling epileptic seizures. Lin Mei, professor and chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, who led the new study in mouse models, said the team found a new chemical reaction that could help control epileptic seizures.

Their findings were recently published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

In Dravet syndrome, a genetic type of epilepsy that is among the more severe forms of the condition, the sodium channel—a membrane pore critical for inhibiting neuron activation—is mutated and allows excitatory neurons to misfire, causing seizures.

“It would be great if you could find a mechanism to make the sodium channels more stable,” Mei said.

He and his colleagues found that a chemical reaction in the brain, called neddylation, stabilizes the sodium channel in mouse models. When the researchers produced a mouse that lacked the protein required for neddylation in inhibitory neurons, it developed epilepsy. The surprising emergence of the condition inspired the team to explore the neddylation process in more depth; eventually they discovered that neddylation plays a critical role of for the sodium channel.

The next step in their research, he said, is to identify drugs or approaches that can manipulate this chemical reaction to stabilize the sodium channel. The researchers are also conducting further experiments to determine whether this applies to patients with other types of epilepsy, not just Dravet patients.