The treatment options for epilepsy must undoubtedly be improved. More than 20 antiepileptic drugs are licensed but in 30% of patients seizures are not controlled, despite treatment with a number of anti epileptic drugs and the response to medication is difficult to predict. Antiepileptic medications can cause severe adverse reactions and increase the risk of fetal malformations in women taking them during pregnancy. The differences in drug response and the occurrence of rare adverse reactions are believed to be caused by variants in the genetic makeup of individuals. Knowledge of these variants would help us to predict drug response and adverse drug reactions. This personalized treatment would help us to select medications for each individual.
Tag Archives: pharmacogenomics
The genetics of treatment response in newly diagnosed epilepsy
Two questions. There are two main questions that we would like to answer with genetics in the field of epilepsy. First, are there genetic risk factors for epilepsies and if so, what are they? Secondly, are there genetic factors that help us understand how patients react to treatment, i.e. are there genes that predispose to response to antiepileptic drugs or that might be associated with side effects? While we have made much progress in answering the first question by identifying many epilepsy genes, there have been few answers for the second question, the field of pharmacogenomics. Now, a recent study in Human Molecular Genetics looks at potential genetic risk factors for the response to antiepileptic drugs in newly treated epilepsy. This is a study that needed to be performed and that we were waiting for. Continue reading
