Achieving seizure free in epilepsy

The primary goal of epilepsy treatment is to provide complete seizure control for people living with the disease. According to epidemiological studies, the majority of people living with epilepsy can achieve complete seizure control with drug treatment.

Drug treatment

Drugs – often referred to as antiseizure medications (ASMs) – are the most common strategy to control seizures. While ASMs cannot cure epilepsy, they can stop seizures from happening. Around 70 percent of people living with epilepsy are seizure-free under treatment with ASMs.

There are a number of things that need to be addressed when establishing a treatment strategy. The first challenge is finding the right drug. Currently, there are more than 25 approved ASMs to choose from. Your doctor will determine the right medication for you based on the type of seizures, personal health conditions, and your response to, and tolerance of, the chosen drug. The initial medication is usually given at a low dosage to begin with, then increased until the seizures are controlled, or unacceptable side effects occur. If the drug response is unsatisfactory, your doctor will prescribe another ASM, or a combination of ASMs. Many people living with epilepsy quickly find the right ASM for them, but others have to endure a lengthy period of trial and error, which can be a frustrating experience.

The second challenge is the potential for side effects. Drug selection is heavily influenced by patients’ individual profiles, as you can have dramatically different adverse responses and tolerance levels to the same drug compared to another person. Your personal situation is also a key factor to consider as, for example, some ASMs have long-term cosmetic consequences, such as acne. Valproate is usually an excellent first choice for generalized epilepsy, or when epilepsy types are not clear, with the exception of women of child-bearing age.

The third challenge is drug resistance. The majority – about 70 percent – of people living with epilepsy respond well to ASMs and live a seizure-free life, however, up to 40 percent of these will relapse in the longer term, and about 25 percent will develop pharmaco-resistance. Should this happen to you, you will need to find an effective ASM for a second time, working with your doctor to optimize the effectiveness of treatment and, at the same time, minimize side effects.

Staying seizure free

Recent research has suggested that the risk of further seizures can be significantly reduced – by 30-40 percent – if treatment can start immediately after diagnosis. This requires doctors to make faster diagnoses and quicker decisions on ASMs. While both processes are complex, and take time to complete, one potential way to shorten these processes is to introduce complementary diagnostics tools. Machine learning tools are already being used in other disease areas to help doctors make decisions. Although still a few steps away from routine clinical use, new technologies offering simple, non-invasive, real-time alternatives to blood testing are moving ahead. One such solution – DBI-EPIbreath® from Deep Breath Intelligence (DBI) – simply requires a breath sample, with the result available immediately. Learn more about the technology or ask your doctor.

Summary

Staying seizure free is enormously important for people living with epilepsy, and with the right treatment most will achieve this. Ongoing research and development continue to give rise to new technological advances, further improving the management of epilepsy and making it possible for the majority of people to live a normal, seizure-free life.