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Keppra stopped Absence Seizures
Mon, 03/27/2017 - 20:37Topic: Medication Issues
My 11 year old daughter has been on Keppra for 3/4 years now. She started having absence seizures at 3/4 years old. Her presvjool teacher noticed them and after consulting with several neurologists she was diagnosed with absence seizures. The Neuro I was seeing had told us that they were not causing damage to her brain and if we had to stop the medication that it would not hurt her or get worse. Unfortunately due to lack of medical coverage we were unable to keep her on medication due to not being able to afford it. Finally 3/4 years ago I was able to get medical coverage and get her back in the neurologist. By now she was have AT LEAST 20-30 absence seizures a day and was taking 10ml of Keppra 2 X's a day. Remember, we were told they weren't causing damage and that it wouldn't get worse. Boy was he wrong. The new pediatric Neuro said that she was he way to a Grand Mal seizure if we don't control them and admitted her into the hospital for a 72 hour EEG. It was then when another neurologist in the practice came in and said that Keppra is supposed to be prescribed 3 X's a day. So, they increased the dose and adjusted it to 10ml 3 X's a day. After a month I noticed great change in her attitude I noticed she had very little concern about wether or not she did well academically and she was very argumentative and defiant. Her attention span is maybe 5 seconds. However I never even thought that maybe the Keppra was affecting her in that way because after 5 months of being on the Keppra 3 X's a day, she went from having 20-30 seizures a day to none. Literally over night it happened. In November of 2015, the increase in Kepra took place, and in April of 2016 her seizures stopped. Today she is seizure free after battling them for 7 years however, I feel like we are in the midst of a new battle......ADHD and her attitude. After reading all the comments I'm seeing a trend.....Keppra works wonders on seizures for most children but brings on many other issues in other areas. I have a new appt set in June with another neurologist so hopefully we can get to the bottom of this. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
our child took keppra twice a
Submitted by Amy Jo on Mon, 2017-03-27 - 23:00
our child took keppra twice a day when she took keppra, they generally try to avoid dosing more than twice daily because adherence goes way down. but keppra does break down fast so did they choose that dosing because she was breaking it down faster than normal? otherwise 3000mg is on the high end of dosing for an 11yo (highlight or copy/paste into address bar http://reference.medscape.com/drug/keppra-spritam-levetiracetam-343013 ) although if she's particularly resistant, needing a high dose is possibly a problem with any drug. Most people treat regular absence with divalproex sodium/valproic acid or ethosuximide. our child has atypical absence and takes lamotrigine (lamotrigine is like keppra in that it can treat partial or generalized seizures but is not a first choice for absence, it's more of a fluke that we started it before we found the atypical absences, didn't find those until we did an EEG where she did a fast wean).