Investigators in a population-based study in Denmark reporting today at the American Epilepsy Society’s 65th annual meeting have found there is an increased risk of autism spectrum disorder and childhood autism in children born of mothers who are exposed to the anticonvulsant valproate during pregnancy. The Lead investigator was Dr. Jakob Christensen of Aarhus University […]
An existing anti-seizure drug improves memory and brain function in adults with a form of cognitive impairment that often leads to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, a Johns Hopkins University study has found. The findings raise the possibility that doctors will someday be able to use the drug, levetiracetam, already approved for use in epilepsy patients, to […]
Yale School of Medicine researchers have found that a clinical trial of the epilepsy drug gabapentin may have been a “seeding trial” used by a pharmaceutical company to promote the drug and increase prescriptions, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. As described in […]
A side effect of many commonly used drugs appears to increase the risks of both cognitive impairment and death in older people, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA). As part of the Medical Research Council’s Cognitive Function and Ageing Studies (CFAS) project, the study is the first systematic investigation […]
Medications are the mainstay of treatment for epilepsy, but for a considerable number of patients — estimated to be as many as 1 million in the U.S. — drugs do not work. These patients suffer from a type of epilepsy known as refractory or drug-resistant epilepsy, in which drugs cannot control their seizures. But at […]
A recent study has shown that cognitive impairment is evident early on in preschool children with epilepsy, which is consistent with results of similar studies in older children. Age of onset of first seizure is a significant predictor of cognitive impairment according to this study — the first to evaluate cognitive impairment in children age […]
Use of newer-generation antiepileptic drugs, which are also prescribed for bipolar mood disorders and migraine headaches, during the first trimester of pregnancy was not associated with an increased risk of major birth defects in the first year of life among infants in Denmark, according to a study in the May 18 issue of JAMA. Older-generation […]
Epilepsy is a disorder of recurrent unprovoked seizures that affects 325,000 children younger than 15 years in the United States. An examination of medication adherence among children with newly diagnosed epilepsy found that nearly 60 percent showed persistent nonadherence during the first 6 months of therapy, and that lower socioeconomic status was associated with higher […]
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