Dr. Danielle Andrade, an adult neurologist who is an expert in Dravet syndrome (DS), is currently conducting a study of adults with DS to improve the understanding of seizures, symptoms, comorbidities, and daily life as patients age. Part of the study is examining patients that visit Dr. Andrade’s clinic at the University of Toronto, but […]
New Study of Dravet Syndrome in Adult Patients Read More »
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a topic that brings up difficult and complex emotions, and, as such, it often goes undiscussed. However, talking about SUDEP can empower families with awareness and preventative strategies, literally helping to save lives. Additionally, increased education surrounding SUDEP lends itself to advocacy efforts to advance research and end
SUDEP: Education, Research, and Prevention Read More »
With so many clinical trials for Dravet syndrome actively enrolling, it is an important time to consider the impacts that talking about experiences in an ongoing trial can have on the outcomes. If you are participating in a clinical trial and observing particularly profound changes following treatment, it can be quite tempting to share that
Why be cautious about sharing personal experiences in an active clinical trial? Read More »
On January 5-7, 2021, the NIH/NINDS (National Institute of Health/ National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke) held the“Curing the Epilepsies 2021: Setting Research Priorities” conference in a virtual format. The goal of the conference was to guide updates to the current Epilepsy Research Benchmarks and Transformative Research Priorities with collaborative feedback from all the
A Recap of “Curing the Epilepsies 2021” Read More »
The COVID-19 pandemic has raised health concerns worldwide, but particularly in communities that may be at higher risk from illness and infection. To understand this better in the Dravet syndrome community, Dravet Syndrome UK (DSUK) performed a survey of families caring for an individual living with Dravet syndrome from June-July 2020 to assess the impacts
The impact of COVID-19 in Dravet Syndrome: a UK survey Read More »
Serotonin (5-HT) signaling has been a major focus of drug development targeting seizures in Dravet syndrome (DS) in recent years. For example, the community recently saw the FDA-approval of Fintepla (fenfluramine) as an adjunctive (add-on) therapy for DS. Fenfluramine had been a known anti-epileptic agent since the 1980’s, particularly utilized in Europe, but its marketing
Lorcaserin Enters Clinical Trials for Dravet Syndrome Read More »
Just last month, a previous research review detailed how Stoke Therapeutics developed their targeted augmentation of nuclear gene output (TANGO), utilizing anti-sense oligonucleotides (ASOs) to upregulate expression of several genes, including SCN1A, in human cells and mouse brain. ASOs are single-stranded RNAs that bind to target RNA sequences and have the potential to alter the
In this brief report published in June, Vezyroglou et al detail the results of epilepsy surgery for focal seizures in 8 patients carrying mutations in the SCN1A gene that were predicted to be causal. Three of the 8 patients had a clinical diagnosis of Dravet syndrome. The surgical procedures were successful in reducing or eliminating
FINTEPLA (fenfluramine) was recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of seizures in Dravet syndrome. The FDA required Zogenix, Inc to include a black box warning on the label because fenfluramine belongs to a class of drugs that affect a specific serotonin receptor (5-HT2B), and these types of drugs have previously been associated with valvular
In this paper, Dyment et al detail a new mouse for the study of Dravet syndrome modeled after a patient mutation. This particular mutation (H939R) does not result in the typical haploinsufficiency where Nav1.1 sodium channel levels are reduced, but rather appears to affect the function of one copy of the sodium channel. Consistent with
