Edited by Simon D. Shorvon, Frederick Andermann, and Renzo Guerrini 790 pp, $195 New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 2011 ISBN-13: 978-0521114479 It is no easy task to classify epileptic seizures and epilepsy etiologies, with a recent commentary citing 9 articles on the topic published in 2011 alone.1 Providing a cause of a patient's seizures is clearly a necessary component of any classification scheme. The commentary also notes the importance of precisely defining the etiology of epilepsy in an individual patient, given its implications for prognosis and treatment. In The Causes of Epilepsy: Common and Uncommon Causes in Adults and Children, editors Simon Shorvon, Frederick Andermann, and Renzo Guerrini have done an admirable job of creating an organized guidea self-described catalog of causesto assist with this call for precision. As defined in their introduction, the editors use the well-recognized section headings of idiopathic epilepsy and symptomatic epilepsy. An additional section discusses provoked epilepsies, which the authors propose as an additional category in their classification of epilepsy etiologies. The last section Follow this link: The Causes of Epilepsy: Common and Uncommon Causes in Adults and Children [Book and Media Reviews] … Continue reading →

50% of Patients Seizure-Free After Trying First Anti-Seizure Drug May 9, 2012 -- Half of all epilepsy patients who are initially started on one anti-seizure drug remain seizure-free for at least a year, a new study confirms. Among patients followed for as long as 26 years, initial response to drug treatments strongly predicted future seizure control. Yet less than 1% of patients who failed to respond to three anti-seizure drug regimens achieved adequate seizure control on subsequent drug treatments even though some were treated with as many as nine different drugs or drug combinations. The findings make it clear that epilepsy patients who are candidates for surgery or other non-drug treatments should be considered for these procedures earlier rather than later, says neurologist Patricia E. Penovich, MD, of the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota Epilepsy Group in St. Paul. "These patients don't have to wait until they have failed five or six different drug regimens," she tells WebMD. "If their seizures are not controlled by the first few medications it is reasonable to consider surgery." Roughly 2.7 million Americans have epilepsy, and about 1 in 10 people will experience a seizure at some point in their lifetime, according to … Continue reading →

Public release date: 9-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Annie Rahilly arahilly@unimelb.edu.au 61-390-355-380 University of Melbourne In a study published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, Professor Kwan, who is also head of the clinical epilepsy program at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and an international authority in antiepileptic drug development, believes a pattern emerges in the early stages. "Our research shows a pattern based on how a person responds to initial treatment and specifically, to their first two courses of drug treatment," said Dr Kwan. For the study, 1,098 people from Scotland between the ages of nine and 93 with newly diagnosed epilepsy were followed for as long as 26 years after being given their first drug therapy. Participants were considered seizure-free if they had no seizures for at least a year without changes in their treatment. If they had further seizures, a second drug was chosen to be given alone or to be added to the first. If seizures continued, a third drug regimen was selected, and the process continued for up to nine drug regimens. The study found that 50 percent of the people were seizure-free after the first drug tried, … Continue reading →

Donations elusive Legislator confident of funding. Despite assurances during the Legislative session that major insurance companies and a bank would donate $1 million toward a new autism treatment pilot, the state has not yet received any money. That could halve one part of the program, set to begin this summer, at a time when a study of a small area in Utah indicated the state could have the highest autism rate in the nation. "As of right now there is no money," said Marc Babitz, director of the Division of Family Health and Preparedness at the Utah Department of Health. "I am not aware of one private donation." But Rep. Ronda Menlove, R-Garland, who sponsored the bill to create the pilot, says there is "no question" that money is on its way. "Weve been working with the entities this past week working out the details," she said. Expected donor Zions Bank did not immediately comment. Intermountain Healthcare says it plans to provide financial support although the details are still being finalized. The two-year pilot program is expected to pay for therapy for about 350 children between the ages of 2 and 6, through a combination of Medicaid, state and private … Continue reading →

Donations elusive Legislator confident of funding. Despite assurances during the Legislative session that major insurance companies and a bank would donate $1 million toward a new autism treatment pilot, the state has not yet received any money. That could halve one part of the program, set to begin this summer, at a time when a study of a small area in Utah indicated the state could have the highest autism rate in the nation. "As of right now there is no money," said Marc Babitz, director of the Division of Family Health and Preparedness at the Utah Department of Health. "I am not aware of one private donation." But Rep. Ronda Menlove, R-Garland, who sponsored the bill to create the pilot, says there is "no question" that money is on its way. "Weve been working with the entities this past week working out the details," she said. Expected donor Zions Bank did not immediately comment. Intermountain Healthcare says it plans to provide financial support although the details are still being finalized. The two-year pilot program is expected to pay for therapy for about 350 children between the ages of 2 and 6, through a combination of Medicaid, state and private … Continue reading →

Public release date: 9-May-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Stephanie Burns sburns@bmjgroup.com 44-020-738-36920 BMJ-British Medical Journal The relationship between executive dysfunction and post-stroke mortality: a population-based cohort study doi 10.1136/bmjopen-2011-000458 A simple drawing test can predict the long-term risk of dying after a first stroke among older men, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. Despite treatment advances, stroke is still a leading cause of death and disability, with older age and impaired intellectual capacity (cognitive function) before a stroke associated with higher risks of death and disability afterwards. The research team wanted to see if there was a reliable way of finding out who might be most at risk of a stroke death, based on cognitive function. They analysed data from the Uppsala Longitudinal Study of Adult Men, which has been looking at different risk factors for heart disease and stroke in 2322 men since the age of 50. The current study is based on just under 1000 of these men who had not been diagnosed with stroke and whose intellectual capacity was assessed when they were aged between 65 and 75. This was done, using both the Trail Making Test, or TMT for short, … Continue reading →