A new epilepsy doctoral training centre will investigate how epilepsy and its treatment affects brain function.
The North West Doctoral Training Centre at the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool will work in partnership with NHS Trusts – including Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA) – to support six individual PhD projects. These complementary projects will all aim to increase understanding of how epilepsy and its treatment with anti-seizure medications impact cognition across the lifespan.
The work is being funded by the Epilepsy Research Institute UK.
Specialist clinics
People with epilepsy often experience challenges with cognition, such as problems with thinking, memory, and attention. Common anti-seizure medications can make cognitive difficulties in epilepsy worse, and some of these medications are harmful to developing babies when taken by pregnant women.
Dr Rajiv Mohanraj and Dr Emily Pegg from NCA will be involved in supervising two of the projects, working with patients who attend specialist clinics at Salford Royal:
- Working with people with epilepsy and their families to understand how they view the impact of antiseizure medications on their cognitive functioning.
- Working with people with epilepsy to understand how they use complex information about the benefits and risks associated with their treatment to make decisions when planning a pregnancy.
Valuable data
Dr Mohanraj said: “The new North West Doctoral Training Centre will help to develop the epilepsy researchers of the future and improve clinical practice by providing evidence-based decision making and counselling tools for cognition in epilepsy, for patients and their offspring. This vital area of research will generate valuable data to guide clinical care.”
The centre will be led by Dr Rebecca Bromley at Manchester and Professor Simon Keller at Liverpool. Dr Bromley said: “Epilepsy is more than just seizures. People with epilepsy often experience challenges with cognition and, despite the importance of this topic for people with epilepsy, research on this topic has been largely overlooked. Our Doctoral Training Centre, split across the Universities of Manchester and Liverpool in partnership with local NHS Trusts, will combine world-leading expertise in pre-clinical and clinical brain research in order to answer these important questions.”