Reproductive and Sexual Health Concerns in Transition-Age Adolescents and Young Adults With Epilepsy.

A plethora of hormonal and physical changes occur as adolescents grow into adulthood. These changes pose additional challenges for youth with epilepsy. Providers, parents, and patients must be well educated about the hormonal influences, both intrinsic and pharmaceutical, on seizures and antiepileptics (AEDs).

Expert opinion: Proposed diagnostic and treatment algorithms for Lennox-Gastaut syndrome in adult patients.

Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a severe developmental epileptic encephalopathy diagnosed in childhood that persists through adolescence and into adulthood. While the characteristics of LGS in pediatric patients are well defined, including "drop attacks", interictal slow spike and wave electroencephalogram (EEG) activity, and intellectual disability, these features can evolve over time, and different EEG activities may be present in adult patients with LGS. This may result in missed diagnoses in these patients and subsequent challenges for the adequate treatment of their seizures.

Levetiracetam Pregnancy Registry: Final results and a review of the impact of registry methodology and definitions on the prevalence of major congenital malformations.

Background: To evaluate pregnancy outcomes among women participating in the antiepileptic drug (AED) Levetiracetam Registry (LEV-Registry), and to review the impact of using two other registries' outcome definitions on the number of major congenital malformations (MCMs).

Methods: This US-based prospective study (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00345475) was overseen by an independent Expert Panel.

Development of a classifier to identify patients with probable Lennox-Gastaut syndrome in health insurance claims databases via random forest methodology.

Describe the development of a claims-based classifier utilizing machine learning to identify patients with probable Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) from six state Medicaid programs. Patients were included if they had ≥2 medical claims ≥30 days apart for specified or unspecified epilepsy, excluding those with ≥1 claim for petit mal status. The LGS classifier utilized a random forest algorithm, a compilation of thousands of binary decision trees in which machine-generated predictor variables split the data set into branches that predict the presence or absence of LGS.

Burden of illness in patients with possible Lennox-Gastaut syndrome: A retrospective claims-based study.

Objective: Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is a severe and treatment-resistant epilepsy syndrome characterized by multiple subtypes of intractable seizures, moderate to severe cognitive impairment, and slow spike-wave complexes on electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. Lennox-Gastaut syndrome is also associated with increased risk for injury, reduced quality of life, long-term disability, and early mortality. By evaluating private and public US medical insurance claims, we quantified healthcare utilization and direct costs in patients with possible LGS.