BEDREHELSE-Bedre helse og livskvalitet

Alzheimers disease (AD), epilepsy, and depression affect more than 40 million Europeans, for a total cost exceeding 230 billion in 2010. The majority of these costs are indirect, in relation with the socio-economic consequences of associated co-morbidities and uncontrolled seizures. The link between AD and epilepsy is best described as ?shared risk factor association? Originating from common underlying risk factors (depression, traumatic brain injury), which are predisposing to the development of both conditions. Classic pharmacological approaches to the treatment or prevention of cognitive decline, epilepsy and/or depression have failed to substantially reduce their medical and financial burden. In general, we do not know the exact mechanisms underlying (i) epilepsy in AD, (ii) AD in epilepsy, and (iii) depression in either epilepsy or AD. These conditions display common alterations, including hyperexcitability, neuroinflammation and blood-brain-barrier (BBB) dysfunction, involving the same brain areas of hippocampus and limbic networks. Addressing common pathways and related comorbidities represents an innovative way to develop new, potentially preventative therapies, which has been stagnating, partly due to a lack of clinically validated, sensitive and specific biomarkers to identify the relevant disease-mechanism in individual patients. Biomarkers are the pre-requisite to develop innovative, mechanisms-based treatment strategies within a personalised health care framework. Using a multidisciplinary approach with inter-linked pre-clinical and clinical studies, ADEPT aims to utilize a pre-existing European collaborations to deliver and establish novel therapeutic strategies for prevention and treatment of cognitive decline, seizures and depression in elderly people, based on improved understanding of hyperexcitable networks and BBB dysfunction as pathophysiological mechanisms relevant for the development of AD, epilepsy and its common co-morbidity depression.