January 10, 2018

More than one-third of patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy do not respond to treatment with antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), according to a study published online in JAMA Neurology

Zhibin Chen, PhD, from the University of Melbourne in Australia, and colleagues conducted a longitudinal observational cohort study to assess long-term outcomes in 1,795 patients with newly diagnosed and treated epilepsy.

Patients were followed for a minimum of 2 years or until death. The researchers found that 63.7% of patients had been seizure-free for the previous year or longer at the end of the study period.