NEW ORLEANS – according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Epilepsy Society. The most prominent symptoms and effects on daily life may differ in the early, middle, and late stages of the disease, the results suggest.
Dr. Jacqueline A. French
Lead study author Jacqueline A. French, MD, professor of neurology at New York University, and her colleagues interviewed 62 patients with focal-onset epilepsy to examine patients’ experiences living with epilepsy. The investigators focused on salient symptoms and functional impacts – those that were reported by at least 50% of patients and were associated with a high degree of disturbance (patients rated them 5 or greater on a scale from 0 [no disturbance] to 10 [high disturbance]).
Of 51 symptoms that patients described during the interviews, the following 8 met the salience criteria for the total cohort: twitching or tremors, confusion, difficulty in talking, loss of awareness of others’ presence, stiffening, impaired consciousness or loss of consciousness, difficulty in remembering, and dizziness or lightheadedness. Patients reported salient functional impacts on driving and transportation, work and school, and leisure and social activities. Some symptoms met salience criteria among patients in certain stages of the disease (for example, tongue biting in patients with early-stage epilepsy and anxiety, fear, or panic in late-stage epilepsy) but not among patients in the other cohorts.
“These findings underscore the need to consider all these experiences when developing patient-reported outcome measures for use in clinical trials,” said Dr. French and her colleagues. “It may be useful to tailor measures of patient experiences to the patient’s stage of disease.”
Previous qualitative studies of epilepsy symptoms and burdens were based on small numbers of patients and interviews at a single center. For the present study, the researchers conducted qualitative, semistructured, in-person interviews with adults with focal epilepsy in different areas of the United States (such as California, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). Patients were grouped by early, middle, or late disease stage. Patients in the early cohort (n = 19) had at least two seizures in the past year, a diagnosis of focal epilepsy in the past year, and had not yet received antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment or had received treatment with only one AED and had not failed treatment. Patients in the middle cohort (n = 17) had at least one seizure in the past year, a diagnosis of focal epilepsy within the past 5 years, and had failed one AED because of lack of efficacy or had received their first add-on AED. Patients in the late cohort (n = 26) had at least one seizure every 3 months during the past year, a diagnosis of focal epilepsy at age 12 years or older, and inadequate response to treatment of at least 3 months with two AEDs that were tolerated and appropriately chosen.
Patients’ mean age was 37 years (range, 19-60 years), 73% were female, 79% were white, 69% had a college degree as their highest level of education, and 65% were employed. Patients’ seizure types included simple partial without motor signs (52%), simple partial with motor signs (16%), complex partial (68%), or secondarily generalized (65%).
While driving or transportation was a salient impact for all three groups, memory loss was a salient impact in the early and middle cohorts only. Headaches and sadness or depression were salient impacts for the late cohort only.
This study was funded by Eisai and two of the authors are former or current employees of Eisai.
SOURCE: French JA et al. AES 2018, Abstract 1.196.
