Future Aspirations of Neonatal Seizure Research: Solomon Moshe, MD; Elissa Yozawitz, MD

"There’s little evidence in the literature to support treatment with any 1 anti-seizure medication. We have very limited randomized controlled trials that look at neonatal anti-seizure medications. There’s no standard way that everyone treats and there’s no first-line medication that everyone uses.”

Researchers from the Neonatal Seizures Task Force, a group established by the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), recently published a position paper on a modification to the 2017 ILAE Classification of Seizures and Epilepsies. The report addressed a number of issues and ways to ultimately eliminate misdiagnosis of seizures in the neonatal stage, emphasizing the use of electroencephalography (EEG), as well as including a classification of seizure types relevant to this group.

Despite the recent advances in understanding and diagnosing neonatal seizures, there is still more work to be done, according to Solomon Moshe, MD, and Elissa Yozawitz, MD. Moshe, ILAE past president and current Charles Frost Chair in Neurosurgery, and Yozawitz, director of Neonatal Neurology, both at Montefiore Medical Center, were a part of the task force.

They claim there still needs to be more research on anti-seizure medications within this age group, but that the complexities of conducting clinical trials have protruded. In an interview with NeurologyLive, the duo discussed aspects from their recommendations that weren’t mentioned in the new modifications that need addressing.

REFERENCE

Pressler RM, Cilio MR, Mizrahi EM, et al. The ILAE classification of seizures and the epilepsies: modification for seizures in the neonate. Position paper by the ILAE Task Force on Neonatal Seizures. Epilepsia. Published February 1, 2021. doi: 10.1111/epi.16815