A couple of clinicians in University of Pennsylvania’s UpStart incubator program in its Center for Technology Transfer are developing a diagnostic to more accurately diagnose epilepsy. The condition affects up to 3 percent of people in the US but tends to be overdiagnosed to the tune of 30 percent of cases, according to Cognizance Biomarkers CEO Dr. John Pollard.
Why? For one thing, epilepsy can be tough to diagnose because there are other conditions that share similar symptoms. Pollard, a clinician in the Epilepsy Center at Perelman School of Medicine, pointed out that one group of conditions it is often confused with are psychogenic disorders that can produce fainting spells. In the context of an ER visit, that could appear to be epilepsy. To get a more accurate diagnosis, where available, patients are admitted as inpatients for a multi-day test that combines closed circuit TV, EEG monitoring and MRI scans that comes with a $10,000 price tag. Underdiagnosis is a problem too, but not as much as overdiagnosis.
Another goal of the diagnostic would be to improve the quality of clinical trials and thereby, theoretically, the outcomes for drug development for epilepsy.
The blood-based diagnostic is designed to find an anti-inflammatory protein that originates in the brain which people with epilepsy have in relatively low concentrations. Cognizance, founded in 2011 with fellow neurologist Dr. Peter Crino, now at Temple University School of Medicine, is seeking an SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health to carry out a proof of principle trial for its diagnostic. It plans to apply for 510(k) clearance and it would be given by neurologists.
About 2.2 million people in the US are diagnosed with epilepsy along with 50 million to 65 million outside the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
[Feature picture from flickr user Wheeler Cowperthwaite]
