Active clinical trials for "Seizures"

The study will test the hypothesis that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy plus Standardised Medical Care (SMC) will have greater clinical and cost effectiveness than SMC alone in treating adult patients with dissociative seizures which had not initially ceased after diagnosis. About 12-20% of patients who attend neurology or specialist epilepsy clinics because of seizures do not in fact have epilepsy. Most of these people have what are referred to as dissociative (non-epileptic) seizures (DS). This means that they have episodes that resemble epileptic seizures but which have no medical reason for their occurrence and instead are due to psychological factors. In younger adults DS are about four times more common in women than men. A high percentage of these people will have other psychological or psychiatric problems and may have other medically unexplained symptoms. It is generally thought that people with DS will benefit from psychological treatments. However, studies on this have been small or have not compared the psychological therapy with the treatment people normally receive (standardised medical care). There is some evidence that cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which is a widely accepted talking therapy that focuses on the person's thoughts, emotions and behaviour, as well as considering the physical reactions and sensations that may occur in people's bodies, may lead to a reduction in how often people have DS. The investigators have previously developed a CBT package for people with DS. In a relatively small study by our group, published in 2010, people receiving CBT overall showed greater reduction in how often they had their DS. The investigators are now conducting a larger study, across several different hospitals, to obtain more definite results about the effectiveness of our CBT approach for DS. The investigators aim to invite ~ 500 adult patients with DS (but without current active epilepsy), who have been given their diagnosis by a neurologist or specialist in epilepsy, to take part in their study. Up to 698 might be invited if insufficient patients are progressing to the RCT. The investigators will collect initial information about these people and ask them to keep a record of how often they have their DS following diagnosis. Three months after the diagnosis, those who have agreed to take part in the study will be seen by a psychiatrist, who will undertake a psychiatric assessment and ask them about factors which may have led to the development of their DS. Patients who have continued to have DS in the previous 8 weeks and who meet other eligibility criteria and are willing to take part in the trial, will be randomly allocated to standardised medical care or CBT (plus standardised medical care) as further treatment for their seizures. These people will be asked to continue to complete seizure diaries and questionnaires, provide regular seizure frequency data following receipt of DS diagnosis and will need to be willing to attend weekly/fortnightly sessions if allocated to CBT. The investigators initially aim to randomise 298 people (149 to each study arm) although now allow for up to 356 to account for loss to follow-up.

The purpose of this study is to see if there are any differences in patient reported neurotoxicity between patients who receive Levetiracetam tablets for one week after surgery to remove a brain tumor versus those who receive Levetiracetam tablets for six weeks after surgery. Specifically, we will see if one group has less side effects than the other, and whether or not one group has more seizures than the other.

This long-term extension study will assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of BGG492 as adjunctive treatment in patients with partial onset seizures.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of Levetiracetam (LEV) used as monotherapy, with efficacy measured as 6-month seizure freedom at the last evaluated dose in the LEV 1000 mg/day to 2000 mg/day group, in newly or recently diagnosed epilepsy subjects.

A new anticonvulsant, levetiracetam will be studied to treat seizures in newborn infants. Current treatments for the brain damaging complication of neonatal seizures are unsatisfactory. Monitoring for seizure detection will be tested at five (5) US sites and one (1) international site using the internet.

An open-label, randomized, multi-centre, superiority study to assess that, in patients who respond to zonisamide added as third drug after failure of a two-drug combination therapy, the triple therapy is superior to the conversion to a double therapy including zonisamide.

This research is being done to observe the safety, tolerability, side effects, and effectiveness of the ketogenic diet in people with continuous seizures (status epilepticus) being treated in a neurointensive care unit.

The modified Atkins diet (MAD) has been shown to be effective in treating children and adults with medically resistant seizures. A recent study in children showed that the use of KetoCal® once per day in addition to the MAD appeared to be beneficial when used during the first month. The investigators hypothesize that including a daily KetoCal® liquid tetrapak with one meal during the initial month of the MAD will produce urinary ketosis in more adult patients than the MAD alone and will lead to greater seizure reduction.

To evaluate the feasibility, tolerability and efficacy of Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST) in elderly patients with a major depressive episode, who are randomly assigned to receive an acute course of MST or ECT. The investigators hypothesize: MST and ECT will have similar antidepressant efficacy MST will have less post-treatment amnesia than ECT as reflected in a primary measures of anterograde and retrograde amnesia following the acute treatment phase. At follow up, MST will show a lesser degree of persisting deficit in measures of retrograde amnesia than ECT.

SP0966 is an exploratory study to investigate safety and efficacy of Lacosamide (LCM) in children with epilepsy syndromes associated with generalized seizures. LCM will be added to current antiepileptic treatment.