Use of a-interferon, amantadin and isoprinosine in subacute sclerosing panencephalitis [SSPE]: comparing the effectiveness

Sub acute Sclerosing Pan Encephalitis [SSPE], a progressive neurological disorder characterized by inflammation of the brain [encephalitis], is the result of an inappropriate immune response to the measles virus or measles vaccination. SSPE usually develops 2 to 10 years after the original viral attack. Some of the major signs and symptoms are mental deterioration, jerky movements, and seizures specially myoclonic type, involuntary movements, and/or behavioral changes, difficulty in walking, speech, and loss of cognition, respiratory distress and death. During the ten years, from July 1991 to July 2001, we admitted 45 cases of [SSPE], at different stages of the disorder. Regardless of their stage of disease, for intervention, randomly, we used one of three drugs; Amantadin, Interferon alfa and Isoprinosine, administered to the patients, for between one month to one year. Fourteen cases received Amantadin, 15 Alfa interferon, and 16 were given Isoprinosine. While the results show all three drugs to be relatively effective, Isoprinosine showed four times more effectiveness than Amantadin and twice as much as Interferon. The results showed Isoprinosine to be much more effective than Amantadin and Alfa interferon in treating the condition

Causes of intractable seizures in a survey of 10,000 epileptic children

Although treated properly for epilepsy, a number of epileptic children have intractable seizures and about 5-10 per cent of them do not respond to anti-epileptic drugs. In the years 1986-1996 about 10,000 epileptic patients were treated in the Children's Medical Center in Tehran. A retrospective study of their medical records revealed that 41 of them had intractable seizures. Of these 41 patients, 56.9% had partial epilepsy, 12.2% grand mal epilepsy, 14% atypical petit-mal, 7.3% Lennox syndrome, 7.3% infantile spasm and 2.4% myoclonic epilepsy. All of them had received at least two anti-epileptic drugs. 34.1% were not treated regularly. 31.7% had organic brain dysfunction and 51.6% had behavior disorder [hyperactivity-aggressiveness, etc.]. These figures show a lower rate of intractable seizures than that of international statistics. The most important cause of intractable seizures seems to be irregular treatment of the epilepsy