Refinement of tools used to determine outcome of nutrient therapy for seizures (LB367)

Background: Seizure Number and Medication Number currently used to evaluate the outcome of therapies for patients with seizures are often in conflict with caregivers’ description of their children’s progress. Caregivers’ verbal history incorporates seizure severity, type, length, and other variables in addition to seizure number and medication dosage in addition to medication number. Objective: Refine and compare to currently used methods Seizure Load and Medication Load, which incorporate the above additional characteristics. Methods: Medication Number and Seizure Number are calculated from daily records. Daily seizure records with number and characteristics are used to calculate Seizure Load. Minimum recommended dosage is obtained for each medication and is divided by the prescribed dosage to calculate daily Medication Load. Response during therapy is the percent change from baseline. Seizure Load Response was compared to Seizure Number Response and Medication Load Response was compared to Medication Number Response. Results: Seizure monitoring tools and medication monitoring tools were compared using 2912 seizures in 1319 seizure days and 17642 medications in 7404 medication days in patients receiving Ketogenic Therapy. Therapy effects detected using Seizure Load Response and Medication Load Response was often not detected with Seizure Number Response and Medication Number Response respectively. Seizure Load Response and Medication Load Response can indicate better therapy effect, worse therapy effect, or no effect when Seizure Number Response and Medication Number Response show no change. Conclusion: Seizure Load Response and Medication Load Response are useful tools to determine outcome of therapy that requires monitoring seizures and medications. Grant Funding Source : Supported by the NIH/NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award to the University of Florida UL1 TR000064