BACKGROUND Intellectual disability (ID) is relatively common in people with epilepsy, with prevalence estimated to be around 25%. Surprisingly, given this relatively high frequency, along with higher rates of refractory epilepsy than in those without ID, little is known about outcomes of different management approaches/clinical services treating epilepsy in adults with ID-we investigate this ar...

Objective: To examine the expressions of mitochondrial translation elongation factors Tu (EF-Tumt) and Ts (EF-Tsmt) in the epileptogenic zone of patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. Methods: Epileptogenic zone resection specimens were obtained from 20 patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. Control samples were temporal lobe cortex tissues derived from 6 non-epileptic patie...

Bone mineral density (BMD) and content (BMC) were measured in 208 institutionalised patients with refractory epilepsy. BMD was in the osteoporotic range in 43% of males and 21% of females. BMC was reduced only in male patients. Apart from age and gender, no other factor or specific AED was particularly associated with reduced BMD or BMC. This study indicates the magnitude of the problem of bone...

BACKGROUND The main purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of treating helicobacter pylori (HP) infection on seizure frequency in patients with refractory epilepsy. METHODS A small sample of adult patients above 18 years of age with a diagnosis of refractory epilepsy was studied at the outpatient epilepsy clinic at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, from January 2009 thr...

INTRODUCTION Refractory epilepsy accounts for 20 to 30% of epilepsy cases and remains a challenge for neurologists. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an option for palliative treatment. OBJECTIVE It was to study the efficacy and tolerability of VNS in patients implanted with a stimulator at the Curitiba Institute of Neurology (INC). METHODS A case study of six patients with refractory epilep...

We reviewed our experience with vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) in 165 patients with medically refractory epilepsy (138 partial epilepsy (PE), 13 symptomatic generalised epilepsy (SGE), 14 idiopathic generalised epilepsy (IGE)). Average duration of VNS therapy was 21.6 months. A 50% or greater reduction in seizure frequency was achieved in 47.1% of the PE group, 46.1% of the SGE group, and 57.1% ...

New-onset refractory status epilepticus (NORSE) is a syndrome of new-onset drug resistant status epilepticus that often has a catastrophic outcome. A 30-year-old man of Somali origin presented with refractory status to a district general hospital. A clinical diagnosis of NORSE syndrome was made, and he was transferred to the regional epilepsy center for immunomodulatory treatment and considerat...

PURPOSE Ictal motor phenomena play a crucial role in the localization of seizure focus in the management of refractory focal epilepsy. While the importance of unilateral automatisms is well established, little attention is paid to the contralateral relatively immobile limb. In cases where automatisms mimic clonic or dystonic movements and in the absence of previously well-established signs, uni...