Blood (serum/plasma) antiepileptic drug (AED) therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has proven to be an invaluable surrogate marker for individualizing and optimizing the drug management of patients with epilepsy. Since 1989, there has been an exponential increase in AEDs with 23 currently licensed for clinical use, and recently, there has been renewed and extensive interest in the use of saliva as...

Seizures and status epilepticus are among the neurological complications of cocaine overdose in humans. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the protective effectiveness and therapeutic index (separation between anticonvulsive and side effect profiles) of 14 newly approved and potential antiepileptic drugs using a murine model of acute cocaine toxicity and the inverted-screen test for b...

BACKGROUND More information is needed about possible associations between the newer anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) in the first trimester of pregnancy and specific congenital anomalies of the fetus. OBJECTIVES We performed a literature review to find signals for potential associations between newer AEDs (lamotrigine, topiramate, levetiracetam, gabapentin, oxcarbazepine, eslicarbazepine, felbamat...

Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are widely used as long-term adjunctive therapy or as monotherapy in epilepsy and other indications and consist of a group of drugs that are highly susceptible to drug interactions. The purpose of the present review is to focus upon clinically relevant interactions where AEDs are involved and especially on pharmacokinetic interactions. The older AEDs are susceptible t...

Despite the fact that there are many descriptions of the pathophysiology of myoclonic seizures, and some clear descriptions of the different myoclonic epilepsy syndromes, relatively little has been written on their treatment. However, when reviewing clinical data, the limitations of such in the treatment of myoclonus have to be considered. Myoclonus is often not the only seizure type within an ...

Epileptiform abnormalities contribute to progressive deterioration of cerebral function. Considered: Ohtahara Syndrome; Early myoclonic epileptic encephalopathy; West Syndrome; Dravet Syndrome; Myoclonic status in not progressive encephalopathies; CDKL5 encephalopaty. Ohtahara syndrome (OS) early infantile encephalopathy (EIEE). Most cases linked to cerebral malformations or very occasionally t...

Dravet syndrome is a rare childhood epilepsy syndrome with an incidence of 1 in 40,000 births.1 Clinically, this syndrome is characterized by onset of recurrent febrile and afebrile seizures during the first year of life in a previously normal infant. Seizures are typically febrile, hemiclonic, or generalized, and are often prolonged with status epilepticus. Subsequently, myoclonic seizures, ab...

Commentary Dravet syndrome (DS) is a severe pediatric epilepsy that presents with multiple seizure types commonly resistant to pharmacologic treatment, as well as intellectual disability, behavioral abnormalities, gait and motor dysfunction, and increased mortality (1). In most cases, the disease is caused by heterozygous de novo mutations or gene deletions of SCN1A, the gene encoding the pore-...