Cognitive Functions and Speech Status in Epileptic Children and Adolescents During Antiepileptic Therapy

Abstract

The effect of new-generation epilepsy drugs on the developing brain needs to be studied in detail, making a dynamic analysis of cognitive functions and speech status in children and adolescents receiving therapy extremely important. The study was conducted on a group of children aged 4 to 18 with idiopathic generalized epilepsy receiving antiepileptic monotherapy and having no cognitive disorders prior to treatment. One of the inclusion criteria was idiopathic epilepsy, which has little effect on cognitive functions. The end result was a Russian-language tool for rapid assessment of neuropsychological and speech status that neurologists, epileptologists, clinical psychologists, and linguists could use on a daily basis. The research yielded the following new findings: 1) data on new advances in genetic studies of idiopathic generalized epilepsy; 2) data on the effect of generalized epilepsy on higher mental functions, the causes of cognitive decline in patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy, and the specifics of the development of cognitive functions in certain types of epilepsy; 3) data on changes in cognitive and speech status in children and adolescents receiving anticonvulsant monotherapy; 4) data on the frequency and types of adverse drug reactions registered in the medical records of 428 patients seen by an epileptologist in 2019–2020; 5) data on the etiology, prevalence, clinical features, and comparative effectiveness of antiepileptic drugs in the treatment of patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy; and 6) data on the differential diagnosis of idiopathic generalized epilepsy and type I glucose transporter deficiency syndrome (De Vivo disease).