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Study Suggests Causal Link Between Alzheimer Disease, Amyloid Pathology, and Epilepsy
A genetic predisposition to Alzheimer disease (AD) may increase a person’s epilepsy risk, while a specific type of epilepsy may increase a person’s risk of AD. Researchers published their results online ahead of print in the journal Neurology.
“Our research found that not only are people with Alzheimer disease more likely to develop epilepsy, but also that those with focal epilepsy, which accounts for more than half of all cases of epilepsy, were more likely to develop Alzheimer disease,” said study author Jiali Pu, PhD, of Zhejiang University School of Medicine in Hangzhou, China. "More effort should be made to screen seizure in Alzheimer disease, unravel its clinical implications, and explore its role as a putative modifiable risk factor.”
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The study used bidirectional Mendelian randomization to investigate the relationship between genetic predisposition to AD, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of AD, and epilepsies. The genome-wide association study included 111,326 people with AD compared with 677,663 people without AD; 15,212 people with epilepsy compared with 29,677 people without epilepsy; and 13,116 people who had data on the level of amyloid in their cerebrospinal fluid.
Having AD was associated with a 5.3% increased risk of generalized epilepsy and a 1.3% increased risk of focal epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis, according to the study. Meanwhile, having focal epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis nearly quadrupled the risk of developing AD compared with not having epilepsy.
The study also found that people with genes that predicted a lower amount amyloid in their cerebrospinal fluid, indicating an increased deposition of amyloid plaques in the brain, had an increased risk of generalized epilepsy.
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