NeurologyLive® Year in Review 2023: Most Watched Interviews in Epilepsy and Seizure Disorders

In 2023, the NeurologyLive^® team sat down to speak with hundreds of physicians, clinicians, and researchers—resulting in hundreds of hours of interview clips posted to our website. We talked to neurologists, investigators, advanced practice providers, physical therapists, advocates, patients, pharmacists, and industry experts—anyone involved in the process of delivering clinical care.

These conversations were had with individuals from all over the world, both virtually and in person. The team attended multiple conferences of medical societies, sitting down in person with experts on-site to learn more about the conversations driving care and the challenges being overcome.

From those in the field of epilepsy and seizure disorders, we learned about the ongoing difficulties in treating refractory disease and some of the therapeutic breakthroughs in this area, as well as the inclusion of new technologies to measure and track disease progression and change. We also discussed the ongoing development of genetically targeted medicines and the basic and translational research that's shaping the way clinicians view complex seizure disorders—ranging from rare diseases like Lennox-Gastaut syndrome and Dravet syndrome to more common focal and nonfocal seizure disorders, among many others.

Here, we'll highlight the most-viewed expert interviews on NeurologyLive^® this year. Click the buttons to watch more of our conversations with these experts.

1. Using Artificial Intelligence Applications in Neurology to the Field: Kathryn A. Davis, MD, MSc

The associate professor of neurology and director of the Penn Epilepsy Center at the University of Pennsylvania talked about the potential of using artificial intelligence in the field of neurology as part of an upcoming session at the 2023 AAN annual meeting.

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

"When you're using an AI-based approach to analyze any type of bigger data set or multimodal data set, it’s important that you understand your data set well. If you have biases in your data set, or errors in your data collection that you're feeding into the machine, then the results are not going to be valid or clinically translatable."

2. New Frontiers in the Prevention of Seizures, Gene Therapy in Epilepsy: William Gallentine, DO

The interim chief of pediatric neurology at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health discussed progress in preventing seizures among patients with epilepsy, the potential for gene-targeted therapies, and the importance of localizing where seizures are coming from.

WATCH TIME: 4 minutes

"The toolbox is quite full, so a lot of the research has been aimed at better understanding how epilepsy occurs and what drives that. A lot of that is currently is focused in the genetic area, where a tremendous amount of progress has been in the diagnosis of genetic epilepsies."

3. Cenobamate as a Promising Treatment for Patients With Epilepsy: William E. Rosenfeld, MD, FAAN, FAES

The neurologist from the Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center for Children and Adults, in St. Louis, Missouri, talked about a few of the studies on cenobamate for epilepsy presented at the 2023 AAN Annual Meeting.

WATCH TIME: 6 minutes

"People often think in the beginning when a drug like cenobamate comes out, they say ‘we use it on our worst of the worst patients.’ While it does great on those patients, it does even better on the less intractable patients. In other words, the patients who have 1 or 2 seizures a month or 1 every three months, are the ones we can get even higher numbers. They’ll do great on the very intractable, but you’d probably do almost twice as well for that group of patients.”

4. Importance of Establishing Healthy Eating Habits in Epilepsy: Orrin Devinsky, MD

The director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone discussed the importance of healthy eating habits and whether all individuals with epilepsy should consider dieting early in their life.

WATCH TIME: 4 minutes

"It’s slow across generations. My grandparents may have consumed 20% of the sugar I consumed. If you go back for generations, it was probably because sugar became very cheap around the mid 1800s. Before that, people just didn’t use it. It was a luxury."

5. The Evolution of RSBQ as a Standard Measure for Rett Syndrome in Clinical Trials: Walter E. Kaufmann, MD

The adjunct professor of human genetics at Emory University School of Medicine discussed how the Rett Syndrome Behavior Questionnaire has evolved into a versatile tool with a broader scope.

WATCH TIME: 10 minutes

"This paper is an open effort for the Rett syndrome community as it provides normative data and insights into potential improvements for the Rett Syndrome Behavior Questionnaire."

6. Uncovering New, Synergistic Ways to Treat Tuberous Sclerosis Complex: Darcy Krueger, MD, PhD

The director of the Tuberous Sclerosis Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s provided insight on whether the timing and combination of certain therapeutics may impact the long-term care for patients with tuberous sclerosis complex.

WATCH TIME: 3 minutes

"The fact is, we’ve been discovering new drugs to treat epilepsy over the last 20 years, yet our refractory patients, the patients that are resistant to getting adequate seizure control, has remained the same. There is some mechanism involved in how somebody becomes an epileptic patient that we haven’t quite put all the pieces together to understand how to adequately treat. That we’re missing."

7. Balancing New Medications and Reducing Adverse Effects in Epilepsy Treatment: Louis Ferrari, RPh, MBA

The vice president of medical affairs at SK Life Science talked about findings from a new post-hoc analysis which highlighted the importance of strategically reducing concomitant medications to minimize adverse events of epilepsy treatment.

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

"If you just keep adding medications without strategically reducing others, patients may experience more adverse effects, leading to challenges in medication adherence. The new study highlights the need for a balanced approach, ensuring patients are not quick to blame new medications for adverse events but rather focus on optimizing the overall drug regimen."

8. Shift in Treatment Paradigm for Dravet Syndrome: Joseph Sullivan, MD

The director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Center at UCSF provided perspective on the advances in the treatment of Dravet syndrome, emerging research concepts in the field, and the influence of genetic testing.

WATCH TIME: 5 minutes

"For Dravet syndrome specifically, this is a very engaged and connected community who have been striving for better treatments. In just the last 6 years, we went from having zero FDA-approved medications for the treatment of Dravet to now having 3."

9. Influence of Antiepileptic Medications on Seizure Frequency in Insomnia: Milena Pavlova, MD

The associate professor at Harvard Medical School and neurologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital talked about seizure frequency and insomnia.

WATCH TIME: 2 minutes

“Most antiepileptic medications are sedating. That is one of the other challenges that can sometimes be limited for the patient and can lead to various kinds of considerations for when they are taking the medications.”

10. A Real-World Look at the Prolonged Efficacy of Fenfluramine in Dravet Syndrome: Derek Ems, MPH, CPHQ

The health economics outcomes research specialist at UCB talked about a retrospective analysis assessing the persistence of fenfluramine (Fintepla) in Dravet syndrome over 12 months, compared with valproate and levetiracetam.

WATCH TIME: 4 minutes

“The main takeaway is that a majority of patients are remaining persistent on fenfluramine in a real-world setting. It truly is providing a benefit to the patient whether that be a reduction in seizures or other health outcomes. Thinking of that significance for those with Dravet syndrome, there are other medications out there that are different from other currently approved medications. Based on that persistency data, it appears to have a sustained benefit for these patients. Therefore, it's another option in a somewhat limited treatment landscape, for those with these types of rare epilepsies.”