Seizure

For diagnosis and treatment, accurate counts of seizures are crucial. The gold standard to determine seizure type and count constitutes in-hospital monitoring by video and electroencephalography (EEG). However, this monitoring is resource intensive and costly, and only available in specialized medical facilities with limited capacity, often causing several months wait times, and for highest quality recordings often requires inpatient admission. In epilepsy outpatient monitoring, however, objective methods for seizure logging are missing or not being employed broadly.

Vitamin B12 is one of the essential water-soluble vitamins which can produce clinical symptoms affecting various major organ systems [1]. Hematological and neurological manifestations are more common in patients with vitamin B12 deficiency [2]. While in adults and adolescents, vitamin B12 has been known to cause peripheral neuropathy, sub-acute combined degeneration of the cord and neuropsychiatric features as predominant neurological manifestations, in infants, especially in Indian subcontinent, infantile tremor syndrome (ITS) has also been etiologically linked to nutritional vitamin B12 deficiency ...

Epilepsy is a common neurological condition that affects people of all races, ages, and social classes.[1] The point prevalence of active epilepsy was estimated to be 6.4 per 1,000 persons (95% confidence interval [95% CI] 5.6-7.3) and its incidence rate was 61.4 per 100,000 person-years (95% CI 50.8-74.4).[2] These rates are higher in low- and middle-income nations compared with those in high-income countries.[2] The world population was estimated to be 8,021,424,000 people as of March 12, 2023.

The prevalence of epilepsy is 0.5 – 1 %, of which two-thirds are focal epilepsies. 30 – 50 % of those patients have drug resistant seizures, and many of them can profit from non-medical therapies, particularly epilepsy surgery. Accurate and reliable localization of the epileptogenic zone (EZ) is critical for the success of epilepsy surgery [1]. In an initial noninvasive diagnostic phase, patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy are evaluated to identify the EZ. If these methods do not provide sufficient ...

First described in the 18th century, the clinical definition of ‘absence seizure’ has undergone frequent revisions to become the entity we are familiar with today [1]. In 1935, Gibbs and colleagues provided EEG description of a smooth and approximately sinusoidal shaped wave with a sharp negative spike allowing absence seizures to be differentiated from other seizure types associated with impairment of consciousness [2]. Further description of this spike-wave (SW) complex and its association with absence seizures was later provided by ...

Dyke-Davidoff-Masson syndrome (DDMS), or cerebral hemiatrophy, was first described in 1933 by Dyke, Davidoff and Masson [1]. It is a rare disease that occurs after brain injury and causes hypoplasia in one cerebral hemisphere [2]. The disease presents with different clinical degrees and can be characterised by epileptic seizures, contralateral hemiparesis or hemiplegia, intellectual disability, facial asymmetry, language and speech disorders, learning problems, contralateral choreic movements, sensory disorders, and unstable gait, among others [1,2,3].

Following the emergence of an epidemic of microcephaly associated with intrauterine Zika virus (ZIKV) infections in northeast Brazil, the Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS) clinical phenotype has been characterized since 2016 [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Children with Zika-related microcephaly (ZRM) may present with structural abnormalities that include diffuse atrophy of the brain, cerebellum and brainstem, calcifications, and malformations of cortical development [3,11,12].

First described in the mid-20th century, Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a severe, chronic, and complex form of epilepsy with symptoms including multiple seizure types, interictal generalized slow (≤2.5 Hz) spike-and-wave activity on electroencephalography (EEG), and impaired cognition [1–3]. Onset occurs typically in early childhood, most often between the ages of 3 and 5 years, and persists into adolescence and adulthood [2,4]. Many different etiologies can lead to LGS, including cerebral anomalies, perinatal cerebral anoxia or asphyxia, tuberous sclerosis, acute encephalitis, ...

It is with great interest that we read the publication by Lin and collaborators on trio exome sequencing in genetic generalized epilepsy, providing an assessment of monogenic etiologies to the disease burden in one of the most common epilepsies [1]. A strong genetic contribution to genetic generalized epilepsies (GGE) has been acknowledged since the early twin studies in the 1940′s, but gene discovery in GGE has been slow, compared to the dramatic success in the developmental and epileptic encephalopathies.

: Across Europe, there are differences regarding driving restrictions for patients with epilepsies and seizures. In the light of increasing mobility, knowledge about those different regulations is of high importance for counseling patients, and physicians.