This is a debated question. I would start with that. The idea came from animal studies about 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, when basic researchers described animals with amyloid pathology, genetically modified animals with amyloid pathology, who had epileptic seizures. And then they started wondering if these seizures actually might occur in humans with amyloid pathology and started clinical studies on hyperexcitability and epilepsy in Alzheimer’s disease...
This is a debated question. I would start with that. The idea came from animal studies about 15 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, when basic researchers described animals with amyloid pathology, genetically modified animals with amyloid pathology, who had epileptic seizures. And then they started wondering if these seizures actually might occur in humans with amyloid pathology and started clinical studies on hyperexcitability and epilepsy in Alzheimer’s disease. And it came along very, very slowly till the idea could penetrate the field that there is a connection between neurodegenerative diseases, I would say, in a broader sense, and especially in Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. And now I would broaden this to hyperexcite, pathological hyperexcitability. And first, epidemiological studies were used to prove the connection, so saying that more patients than expected with Alzheimer’s disease have epileptic seizures compared to the non-Alzheimer population, old but non-Alzheimer population. And then more in-depth studies started really looking for signs of hyperexcitability on the EEGs of these patients, Alzheimer’s patients. And it turned out that if you look hard and if you search for these signs on the EEG, you can find them. And especially if you look for these signs during sleep. Okay? And now we are in that transitory phase, I would say, of both the neurodegenerative field and the epileptologists start to really feel the importance of these questions. We put, and the world puts more effort into the determination of how these things are going together, hand in hand, or is there a cause, or is there a consequence of one or the other? So it’s a complicated question. We are not at the end of the road. We just started the road, but more and more evidence comes that hyperexcitability is a very important pathological factor in neurodegeneration.
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