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From seizures to bone networks
Current research projects seek help with epileptic seizures and insights into the skeleton’ s osteocyte network
By Antonia Maiolo
Better treatment options for children with epilepsy and a closer look at the living cells in bones are amongst medical research projects underway.
Here we speak to two researchers to discover the significance of these projects and what they are hoping to achieve.
SHORTER SEIZUREs James Cook University scientists are leading a drug trial attempting to find a better treatment for kids with lifethreatening epilepsy.
JCU’ s Dr Jeremy Furyk is co-ordinating the work, alongside researchers at the Townsville, Gold Coast University and Lady Cilento Children’ s hospitals, with researchers from the Paediatric Research in Emergency Departments International Collaborative( PREDICT) network.
They will test the effectiveness of the drug Levetiracetam on children who arrive at the hospitals’ emergency departments suffering from convulsive status epilepticus( CSE).
CSE occurs when a seizure doesn’ t to stop after initial medications; it can lead to brain damage or death.
Levetiracetam has been used in oral form for more than a decade as a treatment for epilepsy, but the researchers will be using the intravenous form of the medication. They believe it may be more effective and work faster, without the serious side effects,
Jeremy Furyk. Photo: Ian Hitchcock
including irregular heart beat and other cardiac difficulties, along with skin and tissue problems.
Furyk says this will be the first test of the drug in emergency conditions.“ No one has compared it with the current drug, Phenytoin, in clinical trials before,” he says. Whether Phenytoin or Levetiracetam is to be used first on individual patients will be randomised. The research has been approved by the appropriate ethics committees across Australia and New Zealand.
The team believes children who are treated with Levetiracetam will benefit in terms of the time it takes for the drug to work, the fact that they won’ t need a breathing tube, a shorter hospital stay, and fewer long-term effects of the seizure.
“ We’ re hoping Levetiracetam will be more effective and faster than the current standard treatments,” Furyk says.“ If we are able to prove that with this trial, then we expect it will take over Phenytoin as the recommended drug in this situation.
“ If we can stop seizures faster, we’ re hoping it will help kids recover faster and have fewer side effects from the condition.”
All about osteocytes Researchers from Monash University and St Vincent’ s Institute of Medical Research have used mathematical modelling combined with advanced imaging technology to calculate for the first time the number and connectivity of living cells within bones.
Researchers said the findings could help uncover better treatments for skeletal disorders such as osteoporosis.
Osteocytes are the living cells within bones that make up a network throughout the skeleton; their long, dendritic – meaning branching – fingers infiltrate the tissue and interconnect with one another. They play an important role in sensing mechanical strain, orchestrating bone tissue renewal and regulating calcium levels in the bloodstream.
Researcher Dr Pascal Buenzli, from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Monash University, says the findings have exceeded all expectations. Until now, he explains, osteocytes have been difficult to study because they live in hard, mineralised bone.“ Research has shown that these cells orchestrate, in a way, how your bones are going to evolve,” Buenzli says.“ They are sending signals to the other cells. They are a little bit like the conductor in an orchestra.
“ Taking recent imaging data, we calculated that the human skeleton contains about 42 billion osteocytes. That’ s about six times Earth’ s population. In comparison, the human brain contains 86 billion neurons, packed in a volume( 1.2L) comparable with that of the skeleton( 1.75L).
“ We then used a mathematical model of dendritic finger branching and, feeding this model with data on the network, we calculated that a remarkable 23 trillion cell-cell connections exist in the osteocyte network of the human body. This is impressive in view of the estimated 150 trillion synapses in the human neural cortex.
“ In a similar way to the 86 billion neurons in the human brain, osteocytes exchange information about, for example, where the skeleton is weak and needs to be repaired.”
Co-researcher associate professor Natalie Sims, from St Vincent’ s Institute, helps explain the significance of the findings.
“ These measurements indicate that the skeleton is a lot like the brain, with a similar number of cells interconnected in a similar-sized space,” Sims says.“ While we know little about why our skeletons need such a complex network and how osteocytes communicate, these findings mark a significant step in the journey towards finding better treatments for skeletal disorders such as osteoporosis and osteogenesis imperfecta.” n
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