Patients with Dravet syndrome were treated with varying doses of CBD. During the 48 weeks of treatment, monthly total seizure frequency reduced by 51%. After the 48 weeks of treatment, 85% of patients/caregivers reported improvement of the patient’s overall condition. Common adverse effects included diarrhea, pyrexia (fever), decreased appetite, and somnolence (strong desire to sleep).

Lennox-Gastaut syndrome patients were treated with low doses of ZX008 (fenfluramine HCl oral solution). Convulsive seizures in these patients reduced by more than 50% after 20 weeks of treatment. The adverse events of this treatment were decreased appetite and decreased alertness, however there are no signs of cardiac valvopathy or pulmonary hypertension.

Using next generation sequencing, 74 patients with early-onset epilepsy were assessed with a panel that included 172 genes. The panel identified 28 patients with genetic abnormalities, one of them being an SCN8A mutation (p.Cys261Phe).

A case-controlled study of patients ranging from 5-18 years old was completed to investigate the effects of antiepileptic drugs on bone development in young people. Researchers found that that those taking antiepileptic drugs had an increased prevalence of fractures, with the distal radius being the most common fracture site in this study.

Carbamazapine and oxcarbazepine are some of the common choices for the treatment of focal epilepsy. One of the common side-effects from using these drugs is hyponatremia (low sodium levels in the blood). This study collected sodium blood levels of adults taking these drugs and looked at the prevalence for hyponatremia within this cohort.

This review article discusses the advances made in the realm of genetic epilepsies and how these advances helped to demonstrate that gene-related mechanisms do in fact play a role in epileptogenesis.

Patients 18 years of age or older were enrolled in this study to report the transitioning of patients with focal epilepsy from oxcarbazepine (OXC) to eslicarbazepine acetate (ESL). It was shown that patients who suffered from OXC-related adverse events had an improvement in tolerability after switching to ESL, and maintained seizure control.

IFracture risk is a serious comorbidity in epilepsy and may relate to the use of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). Many AEDs inhibit ion channel function, and the expression of these channels in osteoblasts raises the question of whether altered bone signaling increases bone fragility. This study aimed to confirm the expression of voltage-gated sodium (NaV) channels in mouse osteoblasts, and to investigate the action of carbamazepine and phenytoin on NaV channels.

One of the commonly known pharmacoresistant epilepsy types is focal epilepsy, and many patients have no effective treatment options. In this paper, a chemical-genetic approach was taken to achieve localized suppression of neuronal excitability using viral expression in rats.