Astrocytes might be a potential new target to better treat epilepsy
A significant number of epilepsy patients does not respond to currently available drugs. A collaboration between researchers in Japan and at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) now addressed a cell type in the brain that has so far not received much attention in epilepsy therapy. In the current edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, they describe that astrocytes might be a potential new target to better treat this disease.
During epileptic seizures, a large number of nerve cells in the brain fire excessively and in synchrony. This hyperactivity may lead to uncontrolled shaking of the body and involve periods of loss of consciousness. While about two thirds of patients respond to anti-epileptic medication, the remainder is refractory to medical treatment and shows drug-resistance. These patients are in urgent need for new therapeutic strategies.
Düsseldorf: Zwischenfälle bei der Woche der Studienorientierung an der HHU / Karriere / Wirtschaft / report-d de report-d.de - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from report-d.de Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Photo Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy via Flickr
In Germany, there is currently an investigation related to the doctoral thesis of Franziska Giffey. She has served as the federal minister of family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel since 2018. Giffey will be the socialist candidate for mayor of Berlin in 2021.
In 2019, allegations of plagiarism led Berlin’s Free University to review Giffey’s 2010 dissertation. For eight months, the university investigated her thesis, titled
Europe’s Way to the Citizen â The Policy of the European Commission to Involve Civil Society. The investigation commission concluded that one third of its 260 pages contained mistakes or improperly-mentioned quotations.
The historian from Dusseldorf,
Alexander Friedman, has been monitoring official propaganda in Belarus for several months. He concluded that pro-government Telegram channels and employees of state-owned media are cultivating neo-Soviet anti-Semitism.
Friedman spoke about the result of his research on Jewish views on protests in Belarus, which was published in the Russian magazine Ab Imperio, during a round table of historians on the air of Radio Svaboda.
Who is Alexander Friedman:
• graduate of the Faculty of History, BSU, Doctor (PhD)
• employee of the project Memory of the Jewish heritage in Belarus, Ukraine, and Poland after 1945 (Center for Anthropological Research of Museums and Heritage at the Institute of European Ethnology, Humboldt University (Berlin)
Picking up picograms of prorenin protein wiley.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wiley.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.