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Treatment with anti-epileptic medication may reduce the incidence of SUDEP

An important study published in the electronic version of Lancet Neurology, concludes that treatment with anti-epileptic medication may reduce the incidence of SUDEP by more than seven times.

The research once again highlights the fact that seizures are the cause of SUDEP, and therefore preventing seizures by effective treatment that reduces the cause of seizures (such as anti seizure drugs) would be helpful.

The researchers, Professor Ryvlin and colleagues from the Claude Bernard Universite in Lyon, France, undertook a meta-analysis of the impact of anti-epileptic drugs on the prevention of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) and looked at numbers of SUDEP deaths in adults who had drug-resistant epilepsy who were given an add-on drug treatment and comparing these with numbers of deaths in adults with drug-resistant epilepsy who were given a sugar pill (placebo).  The researchers found that SUDEP was significantly less common in the group that had been given a seizure drug versus a sugar pill. 

The authors concluded that treatment with anti-epileptic drugs at therapeutic doses can reduce the incidence of definite or probable SUDEP by more than seven times. 

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