Active clinical trials for "Epilepsy"

This study is designed to collect data to support development of a novel product designed to sense changes in heart rate or movement during periods of sleep in people with epilepsy. When a potential seizure is detected, the system sends out an audio-visual notification.

The purpose of this study is to determine if the program Creating Opportunities for Parent Empowerment (COPE) is feasible to administer to parents of children with neurological conditions. The goal of the study is to empower parents by providing them with educational materials designed to teach them how to foster healthy coping skills in their child.

Improving medical compliance and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among people with epilepsy (PWE) has become the focus of various treatment programs and behavioral interventions which continue to be challenging to both patients and health care professionals. In order to design an effective intervention on the management of epilepsy, the drug management of epilepsy by community health workers was evaluated.

Purpose of the study The purpose of this study is to pilot an adapted Coping Skills Training (CST) intervention for feasibility and preliminary efficacy with a sample of children 8 to 12 years of age and their parents. The participants in this study at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin are dealing with one of three chronic health conditions (Rheumatologic Conditions, Epilepsy,Spina Bifida, and Asthma). Research Questions/Study Aims The research questions addressed in the full study are: What is the impact of CST on child depression, QOL, health motivation, attitude toward illness, and self-management efficacy? What is the impact of CST on parent depression, perception of child's quality of life, perception of impact of CHC on family, and family conflict?

The purpose of the study is to investigate effect of immunotherapy in intractable cryptogenic epilepsy patients with autoimmune antibody.

Evaluate the long-term clinical effectiveness and safety of the PINS Deep Brain Stimulation to patients with refractory epilepsy.

Pharmacoresistant epilepsy remains around 30% despite the development of 25 anti epileptic drugs. Of course, this can be explained by pharmacoresistant epileptic brain diseases, as exemplified by some genetic diseases. However, the lack of specific guidelines for the choice of the anti epileptic drugs (apart from generalized and partial epilepsy) and the very large number of drugs with different and sometimes complex metabolism are challenges for neurologists. Among the 30 % of pharmacoresistant epilepsy, there is a part related to pharmacokinetic drawbacks that could be overcome with a more rigorous approach (i.e. dosage and pharmacogenetics tools). Moreover, the new anti epileptic drugs have metabolism more unrelated with the cytochrome P450 and less generalised adverse events. However, their metabolism could be more complexe (i.e. the less known Uridine 5'-diphospho-glucuronyltransferase (UGT) pathway) and bring more insidious neurological adverse events (i.e. depression, anxiety exacerbation, cognitive disorders worsening) which could largely impede the observance and the quality of life even if the number of seizure is reduced or not. The goal is to determine the predictive and the modulating factors of pharmacoresistance with a global analysis (i.e. whatever the anti epileptic drugs) and with a specific analysis (drug by drug) from a cohort of 1000 patients.

Epilepsy affects a significant number of children in the United States. The majority of patients achieve control of their seizures by conventional treatment strategies including medications. However, one third of patients do not achieve satisfactory seizure control with medications alone. Ketogenic diet and lifestyle modifications may also be tried. In some of these children, the seizure focus can be localized to one area of the brain and the seizures are resistant to conservative treatment strategies. These children may have subtle structural/developmental abnormalities in their brain, the most frequent of which is focal cortical dysplasia. These are localized areas of abnormal lamination of the cerebral cortex that can be extremely subtle and difficult to detect, even with state of the art magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). More importantly, these lesions may be amenable to surgical resection resulting in marked decrease in frequency or even resolution of seizures. MRI is a noninvasive imaging modality without ionizing radiation that has played a central role in the assessment of anatomy, physiology/pathophysiology of children with epilepsy. It is particularly useful in children with refractory focal epilepsy. Prior studies have shown that high resolution, high-field (3T) MR imaging of the brain helps to identify subtle focal epileptogenic abnormalities, including focal cortical dysplasia, in some patients. However, there is scarce data directly comparing the performance of ultra high-field (7T) MRI, currently an investigative technique offering optimized contrast and signal-to-noise rations and superior spatial resolution, with clinically available 3T MR imaging. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether ultra high-field (7T) MR imaging improves detection and characterization of subtle structural epileptogenic abnormalities in children with focal epilepsy. The importance of this research is that identification of a focal epileptogenic lesion in children with refractory epilepsy has fundamental management implications, as surgical removal of such lesion may dramatically improve outcomes and the chance of seizure freedom.

Epilepsy, a condition where individuals are prone to recurrent epileptic seizures, is the most common chronic neurological disorder in children. Epilepsy onset is most common in the first two years of life and is associated with poor prognosis for seizure control and neurodevelopmental outcome. The ketogenic diet (KD) is a medically supervised diet that is high in fat and restricted in carbohydrates and protein. KD therapy has shown to be an effective treatment for seizures in children with epilepsy older than two. Associated benefits include: a reduced requirement for routine and emergency antiepileptic drugs (AED) and fewer seizure related hospital admissions. Although reports suggest that KD therapy improves seizures in younger children there is no high quality trial data that demonstrates effectiveness and safety in this age group. The KD is resource intensive, requiring dietetic and physician time; data is required to justify expansion of services to cater for the apparent need. The investigators therefore propose a prospective multicentre randomised trial to investigate the effectiveness and safety of the KD in children with epilepsy under the age of 2, who have failed to respond to two or more AEDs. Children will be randomly assigned to either receive the KD or further AEDs. The allocated treatment will be started after a 2week baseline period, and it's effectiveness assessed after 8 weeks. Seizure diaries will be used to record seizures and related events, a questionnaire will be used to assess diet tolerance; also growth and blood biochemistry will be monitored. The information obtained from this study is necessary to optimise choices in epilepsy treatment, aiming to improve outcomes and thus determine whether and when the KD should should be used.

Effect of oral sodium bicarbonate therapy on renal tubular acidosis in epilepsy patients taking topiramate.