Practical Considerations When Performing Neurodiagnostic Studies on Patients with COVID-19 and Other Highly Virulent Diseases.

The coronavirus disease 2019, SARS-COV-2 (the cause of COVID-19), has led to a worldwide shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) and an increased stress on hospital resources, which has resulted in a spike in the anxiety of the frontline healthcare workers. News reports and information about the virus are rapidly changing. We present a case of a patient with COVID-19 who had a seizure-like spell for which an EEG was performed.

Interrater Reliability of Experts in Identifying Interictal Epileptiform Discharges in Electroencephalograms.

Importance: The validity of using electroencephalograms (EEGs) to diagnose epilepsy requires reliable detection of interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs). Prior interrater reliability (IRR) studies are limited by small samples and selection bias.

Objective: To assess the reliability of experts in detecting IEDs in routine EEGs.

Development of Expert-Level Automated Detection of Epileptiform Discharges During Electroencephalogram Interpretation.

Importance: Interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) in electroencephalograms (EEGs) are a biomarker of epilepsy, seizure risk, and clinical decline. However, there is a scarcity of experts qualified to interpret EEG results. Prior attempts to automate IED detection have been limited by small samples and have not demonstrated expert-level performance.

Diazepam for outpatient treatment of nonconvulsive status epilepticus in pediatric patients with Angelman syndrome.

Nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) is present in multiple pediatric neurogenetic syndromes with epileptic encephalopathies. While intravenous (IV) medications are used inpatient for treatment of critical illness-related NCSE, there is no consensus on treatment of ambulatory NCSE. Up to 50% of patients with Angelman syndrome (AS) have NCSE with myoclonic or atypical absence status.

Characterizing DNA methylation patterns in pancreatic cancer genome.

We performed a global methylation profiling assay on 1505 CpG sites across 807 genes to characterize DNA methylation patterns in pancreatic cancer genome. We found 289 CpG sites that were differentially methylated in normal pancreas, pancreatic tumors and cancer cell lines. We identified 23 and 35 candidate genes that are regulated by hypermethylation and hypomethylation in pancreatic cancer, respectively.

Development of two novel benzoylphenylurea sulfur analogues and evidence that the microtubule-associated protein tau is predictive of their activity in pancreatic cancer.

In this work, we evaluated two lead compounds, referred to as SG410 and SG430, obtained from a screen of sulfur benzoylphenylurea analogues, against in vitro and in vivo models of pancreas cancer. Both drugs showed a similar mechanism of action profile, with SG410 being more potent as an inhibitor of tubulin assembly. We determined the best in vivo administration schedule and tested SG410 and SG430 in nine cases of a novel platform of direct pancreas cancer xenografts.