Recent Research

Imagine you’re a patient with a rare type of epilepsy, grappling with unpredictable seizures and unsure which treatment might work best for you. A recent study dives into a unique type of research called N-of-1 trials, which are basically personalized experiments designed to test the effectiveness of treatments on an individual level. These trials have become increasingly important, especially for conditions like epilepsy that don’t fit neatly into traditional clinical trials due to their rarity.

Researchers have been working on understanding the risk of developing epilepsy after a stroke, particularly focusing on a tool called the SeLECT 2.0 score. This score is designed to help predict whether a person who has suffered an ischemic stroke—where blood supply to the brain is blocked—might face seizures later on.

In a recent study conducted at Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome, researchers focused on a specific group of neurological disorders known as developmental and epileptic encephalopathies (DEEs). These conditions are marked by both developmental delays and seizures, making them particularly challenging for affected individuals and their families.

As our global population ages, health issues related to strokes, including dementia, are becoming more common. Recent research highlights a significant connection between poststroke seizures (PSS) or poststroke epilepsy (PSE) and the development of dementia. This study tapped into a comprehensive health care database from Taiwan, examining data from over 62,000 stroke patients from 2010 to 2015 to understand this relationship better.

A recent study has shed light on the rising issue of late-onset epilepsy (LOE) in older adults, particularly those aged 65 and above. The researchers were curious about how this condition affects health care usage before and after a diagnosis. By examining a large dataset of health records from the UK between 1998 and 2019, they compared the health care utilization of individuals diagnosed with LOE to a group of similar individuals without the condition.

A recent study has shed light on how our sleep habits can impact the risk of seizures in people newly diagnosed with epilepsy. While many of us know that sleep is crucial for overall health, this research dives deeper into how both the amount of sleep and its quality can play significant roles in the frequency of seizures. Conducted in northeast China over a three-and-a-half-year period, the study followed 209 patients who were just starting their treatment for epilepsy.

In a recent study, researchers tackled a tricky problem in brain health following a hypoxic-ischemic (HI) injury, which is when the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen and blood. They focused on the role of chloride ions (Cl−) in neurons after such injuries, as an increase in chloride concentration can lead to complications like seizures and the ineffectiveness of some epilepsy drugs.

This article dives into an important yet often overlooked aspect of health in children with drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE), specifically how their condition affects sleep patterns. The researchers set out to compare sleep quality and structure between kids with well-controlled epilepsy and those struggling with DRE.

Functional seizures (FS) can be quite puzzling. They resemble typical epileptic seizures in appearance, but here’s the catch: there’s no actual epileptic activity going on in the brain during these episodes. Shockingly, about one in every five people referred to epilepsy clinics ends up being diagnosed with FS. Currently, diagnosing FS involves capturing a seizure on video and using electroencephalography (EEG) to analyze it. Unfortunately, this method can be costly, hard to access, and stressful for patients. To make things even trickier, there’s no single biomarker to help identify FS, which leaves healthcare providers exploring better options.