New drug shows promise in providing relief for treatment-resistant epilepsy
- Researchers say a new medication may potentially reduce seizures by more than 50% in people with epilepsy.
- They reported the drug also eliminated seizures in some study participants.
- The medication targets focal seizures, which affect a single brain area and occur when nerve cells send out sudden, excessive burst of electrical signals.
People with epilepsy who added a new medication, XEN1101, to their treatment routine had seizures reduced by a third to more than 50%. drug
That’s according to a studyTrusted Source published today in the journal JAMA Neurology, which noted that some people treated with the drug remained seizure-free during the 8-week treatment period.
The study, which was a phase 2B clinical trial, ran from January 2019 until September 2021. It included 325 men and women with epilepsy.
Participants had already tried and stopped an average of 6 drugs that failed to treat their focal seizures. They also had experienced at least four episodes a month despite ongoing treatment.
The participants randomly received either a daily oral capsule of XEN1101 or an inert placebo tablet that looked identical to the actual drug.
The medication targets focal seizures. These are the most common type of seizures and occur when nerve cells in a particular brain region send out sudden, excessive bursts of electrical signals.
Focal seizures, also called partial seizures, affect a single brain area, most commonly the temporal lobe. The difference between a seizure and epilepsy depends on the number of episodes, according to the National Institutes of HealthTrusted Source. A seizure is a single episode with a low risk of recurrence. Epilepsy is a condition in which two or more unprovoked seizures occur more than 24 hours apart.
“We always need new seizure medications as many patients with intractable epilepsies often require treatment with more than one seizure medication,” Dr, Clifford Segil, a neurologist at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in California who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today. “This study with a novel potassium channel opener seems reasonable.”
Therapies currently available do not stop seizures in about one-third of people.
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