Autistic people with early seizures show resistance to epilepsy drugs

By Staff Writer

People with autism commonly develop epilepsy, but a new study shows that many of those patients have a natural resistance to antiepileptic drugs.

Treatment-resistant epilepsy (TRE) is most common in those who have their first seizure at an early age, according to the paper published in the Wiley-Blackwell journal Epilepsia.

Overall, autism spectrum disorders strike one in 110 American children, harming their abilities to sustain common social interaction, communication and behavior. Students struggling with that condition may benefit from treatment in a specialized therapeutic school.

Researchers at the NYU School of Medicine reviewed 20 years of clinical data for patients evaluated for autism, and counted the number of times their epilepsy had continued despite treatment with at least two different drugs.

They found that 34 percent of the 127 patients with both autism and epilepsy had resisted the treatment. An additional 39 percent continued to have infrequent seizures, and just 28 percent became seizure-free.

The common threads among patients with TRE included an early onset of their first seizure and more autistic developmental regression - such as motor and language delays - than the patients without seizures.