Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy

…are proposed to be the underlying causes of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Apnea in SUDEP is characterised by prologued hypercapnia with severe hypoventilation. We propose that this implies an impairment at the level of central CO2 chemoreception (CCR) drive for breathing which is coupled with cardiodysregulation. CCR can be quantified with ventilatory response to hypercapnic challenge and has not been previously studied in a chronic model of temporal lobe epilepsy, in which SUDEP may be obs

Generalised and focal to bilateral convulsive seizures are risk factors for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Postictal generalized EEG suppression (PGES), a generalized flattening of the scalp EEG, is a potential marker of increased seizure severity and risk of SUDEP. PGES has been variably linked to autonomic dysfunctions including loss of arousal. Risk of SUDEP may be increased in direct proportion to duration of PGES and loss of arousal. Convulsive seizures can co-exist with spreading depolarisation (SD), a slowly propagating wave of neuronal and glial depolarisation (typically

Dravet syndrome (DS) is a debilitating infantile epileptic encephalopathy characterized by seizures induced by high body temperature (hyperthermia), sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), cognitive impairment,and behavioral disturbances. The most common cause of DS is haploinsufficiency of the SCN1A gene, which encodes the voltage-gated sodium channel Nav1.1. In current mouse models of DS, the epileptic phenotype is strictly dependent on the genetic background and most mouse models exhibit drastically higher SUDEP rates than patients. Therefore, we sought to develop an alternative animal

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is a dramatic outcome for epileptic patients, with a prevalence of 1 per 1000. Stiripentol (STP, Diacomit©) is an antiseizure medication indicated for Dravet syndrome, a rare developmental and epileptic encephalopathy with high mortality rate (15 per 1000), in which SUDEP accounts for about 2/3. Here, we evaluate the effects of STP on seizures and death using audiogenic seizure in a preclinical model of SUDEP.In the DBA/2 SUDEP model, audiogenic seizures were induced, and different concentrations of STP were tested at various timings between administ