Epilepsy Treatment Could Provide Hope For MS Sufferers

New Multiple Sclerosis Treatment

New Multiple Sclerosis Treatment

Studies funded by the Multiple Sclerosis Society [1] have made what could be a promising development in the treatment of MS. Dr Raju Kapoor [2] and his team at University College London published the results of their study in the Lancet [3] a couple of weeks ago, leading to excitement over what these findings could mean for the future of MS treatment. MS is a condition which causes a good deal of suffering so, while these results do not, perhaps, suggest a complete cure, they may well help to improve the quality of life of sufferers. 

What Is MS?

Multiple Sclerosis is a condition which attacks the central nervous system. Just like electrical cables, the nerves in our body are protected by ‘insulation’. This insulation comes in the form of a coating known as the ‘myelin sheath’. For reasons as yet unknown [4], the immune systems of people with MS mistakenly attack the myelin sheath. Just as when the insulation on your electric cables gets worn and your electrical goods start to malfunction, this means that signals travelling along affected nerves get disrupted. The symptoms of the disease vary considerably depending upon which nerves are affected. However, it can be an intensely painful and life-altering condition.

Many people affected will suffer from reduced mobility, weakness, and dizzy spells. They may also experience mood swings – partly as a result of the disease itself, and partly as a result of the frustrating pain and stress which it brings in its wake [5]. Though the condition can sometimes be managed for many years with treatment, there is as yet no cure, and sufferers may lead very uncomfortable lives.

Potential New Treatment

The research done by Dr Kapoor and the UCL team could have great implications for the management of this painful condition. Dr Kapoor and his team took a sample of 86 people affected with optic neuritis – a type of MS affecting the optic nerve – and tested them (in a placebo-controlled manner) by attempting to block sodium ions from entering their nerve cells. Sodium induced nerve damage is thought to be a major contributor to the symptoms of MS, so researchers were hopeful that blocking sodium within the nerves could at the very least reduce symptoms and prolong the quality of life of MS sufferers. When trialled, the results showed that those MS sufferers who underwent the true experiment experienced 30% less damage to their nerve fibres over the trial period than those who underwent the placebo experiment. This indicates that such methods could help to slow the course of progressive MS, and make life a lot easier for sufferers.

Moving Forward

Encouraging though these results are, these are still very early days. It will take a while (and a lot more testing) before any treatment based upon these results can be dispensed to patients. Much of the operation of MS still remains a mystery – and the less we know about what causes and perpetuates it, the less information we have to work with when finding a cure. Nonetheless, these results represent a great step forward, and one which could potentially bring comfort and relief to many people currently suffering from this nasty illness. There are also plenty of other avenues of research always being explored, as well as methods to make the lives of MS sufferers easier, and campaigns to reduce any ignorance and stigma which may affect people who suffer from it. Scientists are hopeful that we can at the very least bring the quality of MS sufferers’ lives to normal or near normal levels over the next decade or so – and a great breakthrough regarding cause and cure can surely not be far off [6]!

[1] MS Society, “Promising trial could lead to new type of MS treatment”, Jan 2016

[2] UCLH, “Dr Raju Kapoor”

[3] Rhian Raftopoulos,  Simon J Hickman,  Ahmed Toosy,  Basil Sharrack,  Shahrukh Mallik, David Paling,  Daniel R Altmann,  Marios C Yiannakas,  Prasad Malladi,  Rose Sheridan, Ptolemaios G Sarrigiannis,  Nigel Hoggard,  Martin Koltzenburg,  Claudia A M Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott,  Klaus Schmierer,  Gavin Giovannoni,  David H Miller, Dr Raju Kapoor, “Phenytoin for neuroprotection in patients with acute optic neuritis: a randomized, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial”, The Lancet Neurology, Jan 2016

[4] NHS, “Multiple Sclerosis – Causes”

[5] PsychGuides, “Anger Symptoms, Causes and Effects”

[6] Sarah Knapton, “‘Miracle’ stem cell therapy reverses multiple sclerosis”, The Telegraph, Mar 2015

Epilepsy – the dos and don’ts. A Rough Guide for non-Epileptics on how to handle Epilepsy

Epilepsy – the dos and don’ts. A Rough Guide for non-Epileptics on how to handle Epilepsy!

As the father of a son with autism I take a particular interested in the whole area of epilepsy. As many of you know people on the autism spectrum are more likely to develop epilepsy. Indeed one of the students at my son’s autism ResourceBase has just started to have epileptic seizures. It should just be noted that a seizure is a sudden surge of electrical activity in the brain. It may impact how a person acts or looks for a short period.

And it is not just the autism community which she be aware of what to do in the event of an epileptic seizure.

In fact we all need to know so I have taken the opportunity to share this brilliant set of tips of what to do (and what not to do) if you are around somebody who has had or is having an epileptic seizure.

Please do share so we can help promote awareness of epilepsy.

Many thanks in advance.


// ]]>

Epilepsy Etiquette Guide

From Visually.

Q&A on Epilepsy with Professor Martin Brodie


Although epilepsy is the most common neurological condition in the UK, over a quarter of epilepsy patients say they experience stigma as a result of the condition. Experts warn that the resulting psychological impact can be just as damaging as the seizures themselves.

We are delighted to present a detailed introduction to the subject of epilepsy in the form of a Q&A session with internationally renowned epilepsy expert Professor Martin Brodie.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – What, actually, is epilepsy?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – . It’s the most complicated question because it’s a lot of different things and the bottom line is it’s a condition where people get unprovoked seizures that is seizures with no obvious provocation that you can then prevent and therefore prevent the actual seizures and the causes are thousands and thousands, anything that can affect the brain.

In about two thirds of cases there is an anatomical cause, sometimes we can see it on the scan increasingly so, sometimes not. In a third it’s due to low seizure threshold with a genetic component that may not be familiar in some situations that is a singular genetic mutation. In others it’s polygenetic and there’s a lot of different genes involved and so you can have seizures from infancy, from when you were born until when you are in old age and the commonest time now to develop epilepsy is in later life. With over 3% of over 80’s having seizures because they will have a possibility of things like strokes, vascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, dementia and all of these can result in seizures.

The interesting thing is not everybody gets the seizures and you know if you’re looking at say people with brain tumours which is an obvious cause of seizures for me the interesting question for me is not why 10% of people get seizures but why do the other 90% not get seizures, and so what we can see we don’t know the cause of we can get some idea of the possible mechanisms but the actual specific mechanism that the actual individual has is not available to us so therefore we cannot just pick the best drug we have to try the drugs out and try different drugs.


PATIENTTALK.ORG – Are there any clear symptoms of Epilepsy?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – Well it depends on the type of Epilepsy that you have, sometimes in children they can stare straight ahead and miss stuff at school, sometimes the hands can jerk and jump or people can fall, sometimes they can stare into space and turn their head and look away and these are focal seizures and of course the severe ones where you fall down, jerk and shake all over, bite your tongue and don’t breathe during it, these are the tonic chronic seizures so there are lots of different types.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – And what are the long term struggles with the condition?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – About two thirds of patients we can actually prevent the seizures with reasonable doses of medication and for many of these people after 6 months or a year they can get their driving licence back, you can get employment although there is still stigma against that and you can live a pretty normal life, you know you can’t fly an aeroplane but there’s a lot of other things that you can reasonably do. Unfortunately about a third of people that we don’t fully control the seizures and there it’s really life changing and these people don’t drive, they often have difficulty getting employment and I’m sure my two colleagues can tell you better than me how it effects their lives.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – Ok and what is idiopathic generalized epilepsy?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – There are three main causes of idiopathic generalized epilepsy are the absence seizures usually in children and teenagers where they stare straight ahead, myoclonic seizures where their body jerks and then the tonic chronic seizures. The international league against epilepsy has brought out a new classification and I was actually on the body that did that so that we can get away from these terms that no one understands and doesn’t make any sense, so we are now talking about focal epilepsy where the problem is in one part of the brain or genetic epilepsy where there is a lower seizure threshold and there’s a malfunction so the idiopathic generalized epilepsy are the genetic epilepsy.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – And are there any other different types of epilepsy other than those that you have mentioned?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – Well there are few rarer types in kids who have these seizures often with single gene mutations affecting the function of the brain, in older people there are a group of conditions called progressive myoclonic epilepsy which again are also single genes although there may be different genes and this causes jerking and seizures and often people can’t even walk because of the severity of it so really anything that can affect the brain as well firstly produce seizures and they are often different.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – Ok and I was going to ask what the relationship between autism and epilepsy is?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – Autistic spectrum disorder is what we now call it as we realised its most things it’s not just one problem and I’m not involved in that area although we have patients coming to my clinic who have this problem and this is sort of a malfunction in the brain where the brain doesn’t fully function but if you actually do a brain scan it looks normal it just doesn’t function and a number of patients with autism also have seizures and that’s why they come to me otherwise they get sent to a specialist who works within that area and people with autism can be very intelligent or they can be not intelligent and again that can be one of the reasons to why it’s called Autistic spectrum disorder because the term covers different disorders.

PATIENTTALK.ORG – Ok are there any other conditions where comorbidity with epilepsy is common?

PROFESSOR MARTIN BRODIE – Yes any condition that effects the brain can be associated with seizures because seizures are evidence of brain dysfunction, so is depression, so is anxiety, anything that can affect the brain and many patients who have epilepsy also have one or other of these other symptoms, about a third of patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy also have depression or anxiety to a degree, about a half of patients with difficulties to control the epilepsy have psychiatric comorbidity because if you think about it these are all symptoms of brain dysfunction so it’s not surprising if the brains not working terribly well if they have different symptoms and the more of these symptoms that you have the more difficult the seizures are to control and we do try to control the other symptoms with the other medication and some of my drugs actually work for depression, some of them make depression worst so there is a pharmacological overlap between all these conditions that are associated with brain dysfunction.

Purple Day for Epilepsy 2015 – Drop round to our blog and find out about first aid for epilepsy seizures


Purple Day for Epilepsy 2014

Purple Day for Epilepsy 2014

March 26th is Purple Day for Epilepsy. You can read up a bit more about the story at last years blog post here.

As with last year we would ask you to share this image that goes with this blog to help us raise awareness of epilepsy!

But we thought we would take the opportunity today to remind you of the blog post which we published for National Epilepsy Week last year. Here we introduced you to ACTION which are some basic tips for dealing with tonic-clonic seizures. It would be great if you clicked here to find out a bit more.

Thanks very much for your support!


Epilepsy and Autism – Do you (or a loved one) have both Epilepsy and Autism? View the results of our poll and share your story!

Epilepsy and Autism

Epilepsy and Autism

November is National Epilepsy Awareness Month so we thought we would start our coverage by looking at the whole area of epilepsy and autism.

As many of you will know there seems to be a strong correlation between autism and epilepsy. In July we can a short survey asking “Do you or a loved one have both Epilepsy and Autism?”

The results showed that over 44% of our respondents suffered from both Epilepsy and Autism!

So to mark National Epilepsy Awareness Month we thought it would be useful to run a discussion blog asking our readers to share their experiences and tips in more detail.

Anything you have to say will be of great interest but you might care to consider some of the following questions when framing your answer?

a) Have you (or a loved one) been diagnosed with either Epilepsy, Autism or both?
b) At what age were the symptoms apparent? How long did it take to get a diagnosis?
b) Are there any particular challenges with having both conditions?
d) How has it been treated and with what success?
e) What advice would you give to a person (or caregiver) who has just discovered they have been diagnosed with both Epilepsy and Autism?

Please feel free to share in the comments box below.

Thanks very much in advance!