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Marie McCullough, Inquirer Staff Writer Posted: Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 3:01 AM Philadelphia researchers have detected part of the virus that causes cervical cancer in a surprising place: a congenital brain malformation that causes an intractable form of epilepsy in children. This is the first study to uncover evidence of the microbe - human papillomavirus (HPV) - in the brain. It is also the first to suggest that an infection in the fetal brain leads to the malformation, which has no known genetic or environmental cause.

Temple University neurologist Peter Crino and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania did the study, published in the Annals of Neurology.

The malformation, focal cortical dysplasia, is marked by enlarged "balloon" cells that disrupt nerve signals in a brain region that governs thought and memory.

In both children and adults, the malformation is a common cause of epilepsy that does not respond to antiseizure drugs and requires brain surgery.

A link between the malformation and the virus could lead to new ways to manage or even prevent some forms of epilepsy, Crino said. Vaccines that prevent HPV infection are already available, as are drugs that might interfere in the virus' signaling pathway.

Imad Najm, director of the Cleveland Clinic epilepsy center, called the findings "exciting."

"It shows that some of these malformations may not be determined just by some congenital abnormality, but by an infection," Najm said. "Or, at least, an infection could be playing a role."

Others were skeptical.

Neurologist Lawrence Brown, an epilepsy expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said, "How do you get from a viral colonization in the cervix to a brain malformation in a fetus? It's just really hard to connect the dots."

Pathologist Richard Schlegel at Georgetown University, a coinventor of the HPV vaccine, pointed out that Crino's team found only part of the virus, not its whole genetic code. That suggests that the virus was not replicating in the brain, and thus could not be causing infection.

See the article here:
Philadelphia researchers detect a link between cervical-cancer virus and a form of epilepsy