Epilepsy Treatment Outlook

Elizabeth Thiele, MD, PhD: Looking at the content from the AAN [American Academy of Neurology] Annual Meeting, while it was disappointing for all of us that we couldn’t be there in person, it’s wonderful that they’re making the abstracts and the platform presentations available. There’s a lot to learn, and there’s a lot of excitement about what’s going on currently in neurology. And not only in epilepsy—I think in almost every field of neurology, there have been really exciting advances.

It’s a very exciting time in epilepsy, with the current medications—fenfluramine, CBD [cannabidiol]—as well as other medications in clinical development. And now, also, with the concepts with some of these rare genetic epilepsies, considerations that genetic approaches would be safe and effective are also very, very exciting. I think their future has been bright in the treatment of different neurological disorders, and the future is even brighter than before.

It’s an exciting time to be able to talk to families about treatment options for their children or family members with epilepsy. We now have many, many options that are not only effective but safe and well tolerated, so it’s really encouraging that we can now help our patients more than we were able to even 10, 15 years ago.