Using diet for medicinal purposes has been known since the beginnings of medicine. Due to the lack of other methods, diet was also used in epilepsy treatment. The ketogenic diet has been used for over 80 years and it is quite effective. Even though pharmacological treatment of epilepsy is widely available nowadays, not every child with epilepsy responds well enough to it. This is the reason for the growing interest in ketogenic diet (KD).

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L. Carroll, the author of a fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland” describes the situation when the Alice drinks a potion and eats a piece of a cake to change the size of her body. Of course, the scene is only literary fiction, but what if it could be true? Read full text »

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases – there are about 50 million of people suffering from this still incurable disease. Exact causes of abnormal neuronal activity in brain are still uncertain, therefore there is only symptomatic treatment available. However, therapeutic issues are not the only problem. Coexistence of mental disorders, lack of basic knowledge about epilepsy in society, stigma – these are only few point in discussions about epilepsy. According to the interview with John Pellock, president of American Epilepsy Society, let’s have a look at new directions in epileptic care (1). Read full text »

Many women suffering from epilepsy become pregnant. In that case proper control and correct attacks prevention is extremely important. Only a few drugs, used in epilepsy treatment are considered to be safe for expectant mothers. The most popular is carbamazepine. There is also a group of drugs with proven negative impact on the developing fetus. On March 2011 one more drug joined this group. It was topiramate, which is used by adults and children over the age of two in therapy of partial seizures, generalized tonic-clonic seizures, unconsciousness, myoclonic, Lennox-Gastaut and Waet syndrome, as well as in the treatment of chronic migraine and obesity.
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