Lay summary
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a major concern for New Zealand’s aging population and has very few treatment options. Seizures are an important morbidity of AD with ~25% of patients experiencing an epileptic event. Seizures in AD are associated with accelerated cognitive decline and an increase in mortality. Hence new treatment options for seizures in AD are urgently needed. This research will examine if modifying calcium signalling pathways within neurons, through targeting calcium channels, can reduce seizures in AD. This will be achieved by monitoring the activity of individual neurons and whole brain electrical activity in a mouse model of AD treated with or without novel calcium channel targeting drugs. We expect that controlling calcium channel activity in AD will reduce seizures and that this may slow the decline in AD. If successful, this will offer a novel treatment strategy for AD, a disease estimated to cost NZ > $300M annually.