Children with epilepsy are known to be prone to educational underachievement as a result of learning and behavioural problems. Identification of these comorbidities and their early intervention will go a long way in improving quality of life of children with epilepsy. The objective of this paper is to study the incidence of behavioural disorders (BD) and school underachievement (SU) in newly di...

NO concentrations in the frontal cortex of anaesthetised rat were measured by using an electrochemical sensor, before and after intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration of a hypnotic drug, pentobarbital (20-40 mg/kg) or a convulsant agent, pentylenetetrazol (50 mg/kg). The results show that NO concentrations were decreased by pentobarbital, while pentylenetetrazole increased the NO levels. These d...

Newly diagnosed epileptic patients start their medication with monotherapy. Around 30% of epileptic patients require more than one antiepileptic drug. Results from experimental studies provide evidence that administration of two antiepileptic drugs may result in antagonistic, additive, or supra-additive (synergistic) anticonvulsant effects. If adverse effects of a synergistic combination also s...

We evaluated the clinical characteristics and the electroencephalographic (EEG) findings by long video-EEG monitoring in 64 successive patients with definite nocturnal seizures. Mental state, neurological examination, neuroimaging and EEG background were normal in all patients. Classification of epilepsies was possible in 42 out of 64 (66%) patients according to the revised Classification of Ep...

Syncope and epileptic seizures share some common clinical characteristics that may complicate the diagnostic process. In clinical practice, syncope is frequently misdiagnosed as an epileptic seizure and consequently treated with antiepileptic drugs. In this study, we identified 57 patients with syncope (diagnosis based on accepted criteria) who had come to our unit with a previous diagnosis of ...

The drug taking habits and compliance of 16 epileptic children were studied by means of a questionnaire, "pill" count and serum antiepileptic drug levels (AEDL). The questionnaire method overestimated patients' compliance while, because of the pharmacokinetics of antiepileptic drugs in children, single outpatients' drug levels may be misleading thereby not always reflecting the true degree of c...

Uric acid examination in 554 epileptic out-patients under long-term anticonvulsant medication revealed significantly lower serum concentrations compared to a group of normal controls. In patients taking enzyme-inducing drugs, uric acid levels were found to be lower than in those under valproate sodium. In addition, uric acid concentrations showed a negative correlation with duration of therapy ...

Quantitative measurements have indicated that heredity, cerebral damage, psycho-social aspects, ictal and inter-ictal phenomena and antiepileptic drugs may interfere in the cognitive dysfunction of epileptic patients. In the present study objective methods included immediate and late recall and recognition of pictures, Stroop test and auditory selection. Twenty patients with symptomatic localiz...