Paul Barney had his first seizure four days after his fourth birthday. By the time he was 10, his mom worried that if they didnt get the seizures under control soon, he might lose IQ points along with his ready smile. When Brian Manning, 11, had a seizure on the school playground instead of in his bed as usual his parents knew it was time for drastic action. Hed already had brain surgery once, but doctors said he might need five or six more operations. Or he could have one, to completely remove the right half of his brain. Both boys have epilepsy and recently underwent surgery at Boston Childrens Hospital. And both represent the promise and frustration of epilepsy treatment today. Patients have more options, and there is more awareness, less stigma, and a better understanding of epilepsy than there has ever been. But available medications cant control seizures in about one-third of patients, including Paul and Brian, and while surgery is safer, it still comes with high risks. It also remains unclear what causes the electrical disturbance in patients brains that triggers seizures. Roughly 1 in 26 Americans will develop epilepsy at some point in life more than … Continue reading →

LITTLE ROCK, (Ark,)- Temple Grandin, Ph.D., diagnosed with autism at the age of 2, overcame social disdain and uncooperative educators to become one of the nation's leading experts in the treatment of livestock as well as an outspoken activist in the field of autism. Grandin's story, a source of inspiration worldwide for those with autism and their family members, will be the focus of her presentation at a luncheon Aug. 13 at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion. Tickets for the luncheon are $40 and can be purchased by contacting Renie Rule, (501) 526-4232 or RPRule@uams.edu. Named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" in 2010, she received a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. The HBO film about her life and early career, "Temple Grandin," earned five Emmys in 2010. The event is sponsored by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Psychiatric Research Institute and the UAMS College of Medicine's Division of Genetics, and hosted by honorary co-chairs Clarke Delp, Victor Jacuzzi, Dorothy Morris, and Carrie and Miles Eggart. The luncheon will include a panel … Continue reading →

Gene mutation responsible of inherited ataxia found through sophisticated genetic analysis of Asian, European & American families Newswise ANN ARBOR, Mich. A global hunt for the cause of a crippling inherited nerve disorder has found its target. The discovery opens the door for better diagnosis and treatment of this particular disease but also for better understanding of why nerves in the brains movement-controlling center die, and how new DNA-mapping techniques can find the causes of other diseases that run in families. In a new paper in the Annals of Neurology, a team from Taiwan, France and the University of Michigan Health System report that mutations in the gene KCND3 were found in six families in Asia, Europe and the United States that have been haunted by the same form of a disease called spinocerebellar ataxia or SCA. The disease causes progressive loss of balance, muscle control and ability to walk. The new paper finds the disease gene in a region of chromosome 1 where a Dutch group had previously shown linkage with a form of SCA called SCA19, and the Taiwanese group on the new paper had shown similar linkage in a family for a form of the disease that … Continue reading →