Abstract #3413

DTI Reveals Disease Severity Specific Nerve Fiber Impairment in Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy

Michael Deppe¹, Christoph Kellinghaus¹, Thomas Duning¹, Gabriel Mddel¹, Siawoosh Mohammadi¹, Katja Deppe², Harald Kugel³, Simon S. Keller⁴, E. Bernd Ringelstein¹, Stefan Knecht¹

¹Neurology, University of Mnster, Mnster, Germany; ²Neurology, Franz Hospital Dlmen, Germany; ³Radiology, University of Mnster, Germany; ⁴MARIARC, University of Liverpool, UK

Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) is a syndrome of idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) without structural brain abnormalities detectable by MRI or computed tomography. In the present study, we addressed the question of whether diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTI) can detect disease specific white matter (WM) abnormalities in JME patients. Our results support the hypothesis that JME is associated with abnormalities of the thalamocortical network that can be detected by DTI. The alterations of the nerve fibers associated with the anterior thalamus seem to be (1) a marker for disease severity in JME and (2) no epiphenomenon of medication effects.