Electrophysiology of benign familial neonatal seizures and the current therapeutic approach

Abstract

Every year, 5 million people worldwide are identified for having epilepsies, with neonatal seizures accounting for approximately 2 per 1000 cases of term infants (Epilepsy, n.d.; Krawiec & Muzio, 2023). Specifically, some patients with a history of benign familial neonatal seizures were found to be more likely to get epilepsies in their later life. However, due to the high ethical standards being imposed on research involving neonatal populations, neonatal seizures and their anti-convulsant treatments are not as well-understood as other seizures. This is problematic, as the neonatal seizures should not be treated based on adjusting doses of conventional anticonvulsants for adults. This approach is not favorable as neonates have distinctive physiological characteristics that can be different from adults. Thus, simply adjusting the dose of the drugs may have sub- or supra-therapeutic effects, or even lead to lethal effects on the neonatal patients. The focus of this paper is to explain the electrophysiological cause of benign familial neonatal seizures and the therapeutical attempts that had been done to treat the syndrome.