Five almost forgotten blog posts that are relevant in 2016

Happy 400. Even though I have to admit that my blogging speed has decreased considerably over the last 18 months, we managed to celebrate a small milestone last week. We published blog post #400. As there are highly popular and virtually forgotten blog posts, I wanted to use this opportunity to draw your attention to five blog posts out there that you might want to know about. Continue reading

How to get started in epilepsy genetics – The Channelopathist’s third birthday

Happy birthday. The Channelopathist turned three last week, i.e. exactly three years ago we started writing regular blog posts on epilepsy and genes, starting with a post on how SCN2A was rediscovered in neurodevelopmental disorders. Since we had many new subscribers last year, I thought that I could use this opportunity to write a brief post on how you can get started on Beyond The Ion Channel and how you can navigate our blog. Continue reading

TLR3 and the genetic predisposition to herpes encephalitis

Seizures with fever. Most times when we discussed seizures in the setting of fever on our blog, we either referred to simple Febrile Seizures or genetic syndromes such as Dravet Syndrome, which characteristically present with fever-associated seizures. However, if a child or an adult presents with a first seizure in the setting of a febrile illness and shows recurrent seizures or does not get back to baseline quickly, we are usually concerned about infections of the brain. Herpes simplex virus (HSV) encephalitis is one of the more common infections, which may result in significant impairment if not treated rapidly. A recent publication in Neurology reminds us of the genetic susceptibility of HSV encephalitis and suggests that predisposing genetic alterations can be found in an appreciable number of patients. Continue reading

Red Johanna Day, Ninja Turtles and my decade in epilepsy genetics

Where do you see yourself in ten years? You probably might not imagine yourself wearing Ninja Turtle pajama pants, getting up at 4:00 in the morning for a teleconference. For some reason, I kept track of my very early beginnings in epilepsy genetics when I was still a medical student. According to my calendar, today is precisely my tenth anniversary in epilepsy genetics, a day that I refer to as Red Johanna Day. Let’s revisit what happened over the last decade and what I learned from my mentors and friends in the field. And let’s find out about the Ninja Turtles. Continue reading

The 30-10 rule of clinical exome sequencing

30/10. The impact of whole exome sequencing (WES) on clinical management of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders can increasingly be felt, and overall numbers are emerging, which document the success and impact of this technology on clinical decision making. In 30% of patients with neurodevelopmental disorders, a diagnosis can be obtained through WES, and in 10% of patients, this diagnosis significantly alters patient management. A recent publication in Annals of Neurology investigates whether this concept extends beyond the epileptic encephalopathies and also includes patients with presumed cerebral palsy, cerebellar abnormalities, and hypomyelination. Continue reading

The day I fell in love with Varbank

De novo. Three months ago, I performed a trio exome de novo analysis in a patient-parent trio. From my iPad, in a hotel room in Paris. When I got home a few days later, I was excited to tell my students that the analysis worked. They looked at me slightly confused: “What’s the big deal? We had the analysis complete already a week or so ago.” Last year at this time, I was proud that our lab had established a fully functional de novo analysis pipeline. Suddenly, it’s not a big deal anymore. What happened? Let me tell you about Varbank. Continue reading

Want to learn about epilepsy genetics more effectively? Keep reading…

Demystify. In an earlier post, Ingo blogged about the exciting new Genetic Literacy series that should appear in Epilepsia later in 2014. When we first had the idea at the International Epilepsy Congress in Montreal, we conceived of the Genetic Literacy series as a practical learning resource for practising clinicians and healthcare professionals. We really want to use this opportunity to demystify epilepsy genetics and make this information accessible and useful to readers. Continue reading

Why you need to know what EGI stands for

 

Epilepsy Genetics Initiative – A Signature Program of CURE from CUREepilepsy on Vimeo.

 

The Epilepsy Genetics Initiative. If you had told me last week that the next era of epilepsy genetics would be announced by an animated cartoon, I wouldn’t have believed you. Earlier this week, the Epilepsy Genetics Initiative (EGI) was launched, an emerging large exome repository that will help us connect dots in epilepsy genetics research by centralizing genetic data for research. These are the three things that I have learned from the EGI launch. Continue reading

The genetic architecture toolkit – modeling polygenic disease with rare variants

Architecture. Even though we often write about novel gene findings in the epilepsies, we assume that most epilepsies are complex genetic or polygenic. Polygenic inheritance suggests the genetic architecture is composed of multiple interacting genetic risk factors, each contributing a small proportion to the disease risk. However, when using the phrase genetic architecture, sometimes I am not quite sure what I actually mean by this. For example, how many genes are needed? This is why I wanted to build a model genetic architecture and explore what happens if we build a genetic disease solely from rare risk variants. Follow me to a brief back-of-the-envelope calculation of how this might work.

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