Epilepsy News

Analysis of treatment-naive gut microbiota in children with new-onset epilepsy - CONCLUSION: Treatment-naïve new-onset epilepsy involves distinct gut dysbiosis. Antiepileptic drugs induce specific functional reconfiguration. Targeting these adaptations may offer new insights for seizure control.

Mumps encephalitis in an immunocompromised adult - Mumps encephalitis became a rare complication of mumps virus infection after the vaccination era. However, in immunosuppressed individuals and those with incomplete vaccination history, the virus remains an important differential in cases of infective encephalitis. We present the case of an adult male with Crohn's disease on immunosuppression who developed acute encephalopathy with seizure, abn...

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy for the prediction to drug responsiveness of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy according to ILAE definition - CONCLUSION: The study suggested that hippocampal metabolism was more severely and extensively disrupted in drug-resistant MTLE. ¹H-MRS may provide prognostic value for drug responsiveness in patients with newly diagnosed MTLE but further investigations are needed to validate these findings.

Escape behaviors are transiently modulated after acutely induced epileptic seizures in larval zebrafish - Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder giving rise to both recurrent and spontaneous seizures as well as additional neurological comorbidities. In approximately 30% of patients, seizures are not ameliorated by existing anti-seizure drugs. To bridge this treatment gap, the larval zebrafish has emerged as a powerful model for high-throughput drug-screening, based on changes in swimming behavi...

Elevated body temperature affects spike-and-wave discharges and induces behavioural deficits in genetic absence epilepsy rats - CONCLUSION: The increase in body temperature is associated with shorter duration of absence seizures, reduced locomotor activity, and anxiety-like symptoms in GAERS, suggesting thermoregulatory pathways may be involved in seizures and comorbidities. This may influence how people with absence epilepsy react to elevated temperatures, for example during heat waves.

Association of epilepsy duration and drug-resistant epilepsy duration with seizure outcomes after epilepsy surgery: a pediatric population-based study - CONCLUSIONS: In this unselected population-based, pediatric, resective epilepsy surgery cohort, longer epilepsy duration is associated with worse seizure outcomes. Similarly, a prolonged duration of DRE was correlated with worse seizure outcomes. The findings emphasize the importance of early surgical referrals. Future multicenter studies are warranted to further clarify the relative prognostic...

Brain signal irregularity may provide clues to understanding epileptic process - Researchers propose a new method to differentiate signals from the epileptic focus from those recorded in other parts of the brain without the presence of an epileptic seizure. This technique may help detect epilepsy-induced features from these signals much quicker than conventional analysis techniques.

Breakthrough tech enables seizure localization in minutes - New research introduces a novel network analysis technology that uses minimally invasive resting state electrophysiological recordings to localize seizure onset brain regions and predict seizure outcomes in just 10 minutes.

Antidepressant use during pregnancy not linked to epilepsy in children - A new study suggests that antidepressant use by mothers during the first trimester of pregnancy does not increase the chances of epilepsy and seizures in babies.