Dr. Ivan Osorio says most people get involved in epilepsy research for reasons either of compassion or intellectual curiosity. For Osorio, it was a mix of the two.

“The motivations were basically two,” said Osorio, medical director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Kansas University Medical Center.

“No. 1 was my interest in brain functions. The brain is complex and held a fascination for me.

“No. 2, after I became involved in clinical neurology, I saw the suffering of people with epilepsy  and the potential they had for being helped.”

Epilepsy is a chronic medical condition produced by temporary changes in the electrical function of the brain, causing seizures that affect awareness, movement or sensation.

Osorio has been researching epilepsy at KU for 10 years now. Along with Dr. Mark Frei, he has led the development of a surgical technique that inserts electronic probes into the brain and small pulse generators into the chest of a patient.

Like cardiac pacemakers that shock hearts when irregular heartbeats are detected, the generators send electrical charges  triggered by an algorithm developed at Lawrence’s Flint Hills Scientific LLC, 5020 W. 15th St.  to the brain in an effort to predict and stop seizures.

Patients benefit

Epilepsy patients who have undergone the procedure  four by spring 2002  have generally benefited. One patient who was averaging eight seizures a day was down to two seizures a day by March.

Osorio said he hopes more patients will be able to control their epilepsy through the techniques developed at KU

“The benefit of the research is many-fold,” he said.

“No. 1, there are 2.8 million Americans with the disability  a good number of them are unemployed or sub-employed. They live in isolation. The first benefit is to integrate them into society.

“No. 2, the research will help alleviate the costs of epilepsy care, both the direct and indirect costs of care, which currently are estimated at $12.5 billion a year. We estimate the research we’re doing, if it proves successful, will decrease conservatively the costs by 50 percent. That money can be put to other uses, hopefully good ones.

“Third, up to 40,000 people die each year as a direct consequence of seizures. We anticipate the number will decrease as a consequence of our research.”

‘First step’

Osorio, however, is not ready to claim success. The procedure does not stop every seizure, and until that happens he says those with epilepsy will continue to be marginalized in our society.

“This is only a first step,” Osorio said of his research. “It’s an anticipation of an intelligent device capable of detecting seizures very early and capable of triggering some sort of therapy that will have even better results.”

A wide variety of people have helped with the research, Osorio said.

“We’ve had a number of students, undergraduate students, even high school students work with us,” he said. “I’ve had people from chemical engineering, electrical engineering, people in math work with us in the project.”

Some young students have helped researchers examine signals given off by an epileptic patient’s brain before and after a seizure. Others have learned how to cause seizures in rats, as a way of learning what techniques might control the disorder.

“These are generally short-lived projects, but projects that provide important answers,” Osorio said.

Students interested in computers, electronics, ergonomics, economics and a host of other vocations can help with the research, he said.

“Any students that have an interest, a willingness to help others, those certainly are the most helpful,” he said.

People who don’t have an occupational interest, but do have an intellectual interest also can help.

“It’s an extraordinarily broad range of people who can make contributions.”