Dr. Masur and colleagues(1) from the Childhood Absence Epilepsy Study Group tried to answer a few important questions regarding childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) in their article "Pretreatment cognitive deficits and treatment effects on attention in childhood absence epilepsy." First, they wanted to know whether children with absence epilepsy have any problems with thinking before starting medic...

Photosensitivity is the most common mode of seizure precipitation. It is age-related, more frequent in females, and most often found in generalised epilepsies. Little is known about its relation to individual epileptic syndromes. This study on 1062 epileptic patients who had 4007 split screen video EEG investigations revealed that the relation to generalised epilepsy is even more close than gen...

PURPOSE The purpose of our study is to describe intellectual functioning in three common childhood epilepsy syndromes - frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE), childhood absence epilepsy (CAE) and benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (BECTS). And also to determine the influence of epilepsy related variables, type of epilepsy, age at epilepsy onset, duration and frequency of epilepsy, and treatment ...

Benign childhood focal seizures and related idiopathic epileptic syndromes affect 25% of children with non-febrile seizures and constitute a significant part of the everyday practice of paediatricians, neurologists and electroencephalographers. They comprise three identifiable electroclinical syndromes recognised by the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE)1: rolandic epilepsy which is w...

OBJECTIVE Normal childhood development is defined by age-dependent improvement across cognitive abilities, including language, memory, psychomotor speed and executive function. Epilepsy is often associated with a global disruption in cognitive development, however, it is still largely unknown how epilepsy affects the overall organization of overlapping cognitive domains. The aim of the study wa...

By definition, benign epilepsy syndromes occur in patients with no significant prenatal, perinatal, or postnatal complications, normal psychomotor development and negative laboratory and neuroimaging work-up, respond well to therapy, and remit without sequeale. The benign localizationrelated epilepsy syndromes of childhood include benign childhood epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes, Panayiotop...

Specific cognitive deficits have been identified in children with epilepsy irrespective of results on intelligence tests. Memory deficits are traditionally attributed to temporal lobe epilepsy, whereas the impact of frontal lobe epilepsy on memory functions has remained controversial. The aim of this study was the examination of memory abilities in other childhood common epilepsy syndromes (fro...

The clinical and genetic relationships of febrile seizures and the generalized epilepsies are poorly understood. We ascertained a family with genealogical information in 2000 individuals where there was an unusual concentration of individuals with febrile seizures and generalized epilepsy in one part of the pedigree. We first clarified complex consanguineous relationships in earlier generations...

CONTEXT Missense mutations in the GABRG2 gene, which encodes the gamma 2 subunit of central nervous gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA)(A) receptors, have recently been described in 2 families with idiopathic epilepsy. In one of these families, the affected individuals predominantly exhibited childhood absence epilepsy and febrile convulsions. OBJECTIVE To assess the role of GABRG2 in the genetic ...

INTRODUCTION Childhood absence epilepsy is an epilepsy syndrome responding relatively well to the ketogenic diet with one-third of patients becoming seizure-free. Less restrictive variants of the classical ketogenic diet, however, have been shown to confer similar benefits. Beneficial effects of high fat, low-carbohydrate diets are often explained in evolutionary terms. However, the paleolithic...