Drug Resistant Epilepsy
Although approximately 80 percent of people with epilepsy to get significant relief from the therapy, the remaining 20 percent have seizures that can not be controlled by epilepsy medication . Many of these people have some form of epilepsy called partial seizures. A new study shows that people with partial seizures are often controlled by medications for years before their seizures become resistant. The study also found that periods when seizures stopped for one year or more frequently in these patients.
“This study opens the door for early identification of patients who later develop resistant partial epilepsy, which in turn enable us to identify ways to prevent some forms of epilepsy from becoming resistant identification,” says lead author Anne T. Berg, Ph.D., of the Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, which is part of a large multicenter team directed by Susan Spencer, MD, at Yale University New Haven, Connecticut. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and appears in 28.01.2003, issue of Neurology. 1
In the new study, researchers looked at patients who had surgery for partial epilepsy resistant to factors that predict when seizures will be intractable, or no longer controllable with drugs. They also studied the incidence of previous seizure-free periods in this group. Partial epilepsy is the result of abnormal neuronal activity in a part of the brains, usually arises in one of the temporal lobes.
Epilepsy is a disorder in which clusters of nerve cells, or neurons, in the brains show patterns of abnormal activity. This activity could lead to a variety of symptoms, including seizures. Doctors have described dozens of different types of epilepsy. “Epilepsy is not a disease – like cancer, it is a multitude of disorders with different symptoms, prognoses and implications for specific treatment,” says Dr. Berg. Partial epilepsy accounts for approximately 40-50 percent of epilepsy in childhood and 90 percent of adult epilepsy, she adds. Other forms of epilepsy result from abnormal neuronal activity in many parts of the brains.
In this study, researchers looked at 333 patients undergoing surgery for partial seizures and who were part of a larger ongoing study on the outcome of epilepsy surgery studies. Most of these patients had temporal lobe epilepsy, or TLE. The researchers examined medical records and structured interviews with these patients for the duration, frequency and determining the types of attacks patients experience. They found that the patients’ average age when they had their first seizure was 14.6 years, while the average age at which they underwent surgery was 36.7 years. The 282 patients for whom historical data were available was diagnosed with epilepsy an average of 9 years for intractable epilepsy. Intractable epilepsy in this study was defined as a failure of two drugs to control seizures.
The researchers also asked about previous periods when the patients were seizure free. Approximately one quarter of patients said they had been seizure-free periods of one year or longer had. Twenty-four patients (8.5 percent) had seizure-free periods of 5 years or more. A selection-free period of one year or longer is most common among people who were younger than 5 when they were diagnosed. The results show that a history of seizure-free periods is common in people who later develop intractable seizures.
The study identified several factors related to the amount of time before seizures became intractable. These factors include age of onset, type of surgery of patients, history of febrile (fever-related) seizures, and atrophy of the hippocampus, the region of the brains that have been affected in TLE. Of these factors, age at the start the strongest relationship with the amount of time to recalcitrance was, says Dr. Berg. In patients whose seizures began before age 5, it took on average 15 years for attacks to be persistent. In patients whose epilepsy began during their 30s and 40s, however, tend to persistent attacks immediately or within a few years.
“In line with other reports, many people in our study indeed intractable epilepsy who were submitted within a short time after the first turn. What is shocking, however, the large number of patients with prolonged periods of seizure control for their attacks was hardnekkig , “says Dr. Berg. Based on the 15-year average time it took for early-onset seizures are intractable, Dr. Berg says that the study of epilepsy prognosis need to continue for at least that amount of time to patients who might develop intractable seizures late identify the course of the disorder.
The results of this study only covers partial epilepsy, especially TLE, and can not and should not be generalized to other forms of epilepsy, Dr. Berg notes.
“These data give us some clues, but they only begin to scratch the surface. We need careful, long-term prospective studies in order to accurately understand the long-term prognosis of partial epilepsy,” says Dr. Berg. She and her colleagues are now carrying out further studies to determine which patients develop intractable seizures.
Random related posts: No related posts. Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Top Universities In Sweden And Russia Are Sure To Sweep You Off Your Feet – College And University | Law Schools
Mortgage Refinancing & Mortgage Refinancing Help | Home Mortgage Info
Want A Second Mortgage? Important Information You Should Know | Home Mortgage Info