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New research was presented at AES 2023, the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, held December 1-5. This is the fourth of 5 studies presented during the conference that PW has selected to highlight.

Prior research established the association of comorbid seizures among patients with dementia with faster cognitive decline, but the impact of seizures on conversion from cognitively healthy to mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and from MCI to dementia after accounting for cardiovascular risk factors remained unclear. Ifrah Zawar, MD, and colleagues examined data from 44,713 patients and found seizures predicted earlier conversion from normal cognition to MCI (P=0.033) but were not associated with conversion from MCI to dementia. In both groups, researchers found an association between the following variables with a higher risk for conversion: older age, being a woman, less education, hypertension, and diabetes. “It is important to identify epilepsy promptly and treat it aggressively to help slow or prevent this decline in older adults who are cognitively healthy,” Dr. Zawar said in a press release.