New Medicines Mean More Options for Treating Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a chronic disease that can require treatment for many years, even for a lifetime. While no cure currently exists, a number of promising new medicines have given physicians more options for controlling the condition until a cure can be found.

Friday, January 3, 2003

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Durham, N.C. -- People have known about epilepsy since ancient times. But no cure has yet been found for the condition, which is caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Today, most epilepsy is controlled by medication. Rod Radtke, professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, says there's been enormous progress recently in treating the neurological disease.

"In the last 10 years, there have been eight new medicines that have come on the market for the treatment of epilepsy, which have been added to the five or six we had previously. It's markedly increased our options. They work through a variety of different mechanisms, which gives us a chance to maybe attack the cause or the genesis of the epilepsy through a different direction."

"You shouldn't have to live with seizures. If you're suffering from seizures and have for many years, you should seek out help, because there are a lot of new medicines, new methods of treating epilepsy that didn't exist even 10 years ago, that give us a greater hope for a cure or at least control."