An unexplained fall in the weeks before a first seizure may have been the first seizure

The edition in brief

A case-crossover study of 57,547 US adults with a first-time seizure found emergency department visits for a fall were 2.6 times more likely in the week before the seizure than in the same week a year earlier, and 4.5 times more likely before first-time status epilepticus; the association persisted, fading, for about 22 weeks. A Mayo Clinic study of 706 people found plasma p-tau217 disagreed with amyloid PET or CSF in 8.5%, with false negatives twice as common as false positives; false negatives were linked to milder disease, higher BMI and higher eGFR, false positives to reduced eGFR and advanced stage. In the 1946 British birth cohort, antibodies to 14 common pathogens at age 60–64 showed no meaningful association with p-tau217 or amyloid PET at age 70. Among nearly 1.2 million US patients with MCI or dementia, 0.2% received an antiamyloid antibody, and recipients were younger, healthier, less deprived and more often White.