Researchers at the UMC Utrecht Brain Center have developed two programs for young epilepsy patients. This allows them to predict who will respond well to medication, and for whom tapering off medication carries a low risk of new attacks. In this way, patients can receive personalized care. The prediction program is now available online for healthcare professionals, writes the hospital in a Press release.
The researchers translated the two models into an online forecasting program. This software can calculate the likelihood of someone responding to treatment and the likelihood of remaining seizure-free after tapering medications. The program, intended for healthcare professionals, is freely available and easily accessible online.
“From now on, I can better predict the treatment outcome of the patient sitting in front of me in the study with just a few mouse clicks,” says trainee neurologist and researcher Remi Stevelink. “And this goes for all my colleagues. We hope to contribute to tailored care and advice for people with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) around the world.”
Drugs for life
Neurologists generally expect most patients with JME to get rid of seizures completely with medication. But until now it was not possible to say how great this possibility was. Researchers from 18 different countries gathered information about the disease course of 2518 people with JME to find out.
The data showed that three different types of seizures (triggered by menstruation and psychiatric illness) are predictive of poor treatment outcomes. “We combined these predictors into a model that allows us to calculate the person’s chance of being seizure free with treatment,” says Stevelink. Because researchers can now predict who can safely taper off medication, not all JME patients will need to be on medication for the rest of their lives
The results of this research were recently published in eClinicalMedicine.
