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Because pachygyria is a structural defect no treatments are currently available other than symptomatic treatments, especially for associated seizures. Another common treatment is a gastrostomy (insertion of a feeding tube) to reduce possible poor nutrition and repeated aspiration pneumonia.
Treatment is symptomatic, and may include anti-seizure medication and special or supplemental education consisting of physical, occupational, and speech therapies.
Treatment plans will vary depending on the severity of the condition and its evidences in each patient.
Areas that will probably need to be evaluated and assessed include speech, vision, hearing and EEG. Treatment measures may include physical therapy, occupational therapy, Speech therapy, anti-seizure drugs and orthotic devices. Surgery may be needed to assuage spastic motor problems. Various supportive measures such as joint contractures that could prevent complications.
Genetic counseling may also be recommended
CBPS is commonly treated with anticonvulsant therapy to reduce seizures. Therapies include anticonvulsant drugs, adrenocorticotropic hormone therapy, and surgical therapy, including focal corticectomy and callosotomy. Special education, speech therapy, and physical therapy are also used to help children with intellectual disability due to CBPS.
The term 'pachygyria' does not directly relate to a specific malformation but rather is used to generally describe physical characteristics of the brain in association with several neuronal migration disorders; most commonly disorders relating to varied degrees of lissencephaly. Lissencephaly is present in 1 of 85,470 births and the life span of those affected is short as only a few survive past the age of 20.
Pachygyria is a condition identified by a type of cortical genetic malformation. Clinicians will subjectively determine the malformation based on the degree of malposition and the extent of thickened abnormal grey differentiation present.
Bilateral frontoparietal polymicrogyria (BFPP) is a genetic disorder with autosomal recessive inheritance that causes a cortical malformation. Our brain has folds in the cortex to increase surface area called gyri and patients with polymicrogyri have an increase number of folds and smaller folds than usual. Polymicrogyria is defined as a cerebral malformation of cortical development in which the normal gyral pattern of the surface of the brain is replaced by an excessive number of small, fused gyri separated by shallow sulci and abnormal cortical lamination. From ongoing research, mutation in GPR56, a member of the adhesion G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family, results in BFPP. These mutations are located in different regions of the protein without any evidence of a relationship between the position of the mutation and phenotypic severity. It is also found that GPR56 plays a role in cortical pattering.
Given the benign nature of the condition and the low seizure frequency, treatment is often unnecessary. If treatment is warranted or preferred by the child and his or her family, antiepileptic drugs can usually control the seizures easily. Carbamazepine is the most frequently used first-line drug, but many other antiepileptic drugs, including valproate, phenytoin, gabapentin, levetiracetam and sultiame have been found effective as well. Bedtime dosing is advised by some. Treatment can be short and drugs can almost certainly be discontinued after two years without seizures and with normal EEG findings, perhaps even earlier.
Parental education about Rolandic epilepsy is the cornerstone of correct management. The traumatizing, sometimes long-lasting effect on parents is significant.
It is unclear if there are any benefits to clobazam over other seizure medications.
The prognosis for children with NMDs varies depending on the specific disorder and the degree of brain abnormality and subsequent neurological signs and symptoms.
Since there are very few treatment methods focused on managing megalencephaly, future research is targeted at inhibiting mutation of the pathway. However, this next step could be met with several complications as understanding the underlying mechanism of the mutation is a difficult task. The genetic coding that initiates a single mutation is sporadic and patterns are hard to detect in many cases.
Even thought very little research has been done to create inhibitors of the PI3K-AKT pathway, several pharmaceutical companies have begun to focus their interests in designing a prevention method for this purpose.
The prognosis of ICOE-G is unclear, although available data indicate that remission occurs in 50–60% of patients within 2–4 years of onset. Seizures show a dramatically good response to carbamazepine in more than 90% of patients. However, 40–50% of patients may continue to have visual seizures and infrequent secondarily generalized convulsions, particularly if they have not been appropriately treated with antiepileptic drugs.
Treatment for those with lissencephaly is symptomatic and depends on the severity and locations of the brain malformations. Supportive care may be needed to help with comfort and nursing needs. Seizures may be controlled with medication and hydrocephalus may require shunting. If feeding becomes difficult, a gastrostomy tube may be considered.
Polymicrogyria (PMG) is a condition that affects the development of the human brain by multiple small gyri (microgyri) creating excessive folding of the brain leading to an abnormally thick cortex. This abnormality can affect either one region of the brain or multiple regions.
The time of onset has yet to be identified; however, it has been found to occur before birth in either the earlier or later stages of brain development. Early stages include impaired proliferation and migration of neuroblasts, while later stages show disordered post-migration development.
The symptoms experienced differ depending on what part of the brain is affected. There is no specific treatment to get rid of this condition, but there are medications that can control the symptoms such as seizures, delayed development or weakened muscles as some of the noted effects.
There is currently no specific treatment for megalencephaly, however periodic head measurements may be assessed to determine the rate of brain growth.
Those individuals who develop neurological disorders may be prescribed anti-epileptic drugs for seizures. Studies have shown that reducing epilepsy can increase cell apoptosis and reduce the proliferation of neurons that ultimately leads to brain overgrowth.
Over the past decade or so, researchers have been attempting to discover less invasive, safer and more efficient technologies that enable surgeons to remove epileptogenic focal zones without causing any damage to neighboring cortical areas. One such technology that has emerged and has great promise, is the use of gamma knife radiosurgery to either excise a brain tumor or repair a vascular malformation.
In Gamma Knife radiosurgery, intersecting gamma radiation beams are applied directly to the tumor site or vascular malformation site that had been established using neuroimaging. Although each beam itself is not strong enough to damage brain tissue, when the beams interesect they are strong enough to destroy the specific brain tissue that is to be excised. This process is extremely efficient and entirely non-invasive and is therefore much safer than actual neurosurgery itself.
Recently researchers and surgeons alike have begun to use Gamma Knife radiosurgery to treat cases of epilepsy by removing tumors responsible for causing the seizures. The early success rates in being able to alleviate seizures seem to be similar to those of temporal resective surgery however Gamma Knife radiosurgery has less associated risk factors. Current research on this topic is aimed at improving the technique in order to increase success rates as well as developing non-invasive forms of physiologic monitoring in order to determine the epileptogenic focus conclusively.
Limited information was known about cerebral disorders until the development of modern technologies. Brain imaging and genetic sequencing greatly increased the information known about polymicrogyria within the past decade. Understanding about development, classification and localization of the disorder have greatly improved. For instance, localization of specific cortex regions affected by the disease was determined. This allowed for clinical symptoms of patients to be linked with localized cortex areas affected. A gene that was identified to be a contributor to Bilateral frontoparietal polymicrogyria was GPR56. This is the only gene that has been directly linked to the disease.
The use of a regimented diet is an approach that has been found to help control seizures in children with severe, medically intractable frontal lobe epilepsy. Although the use of dieting to prevent seizures from occurring is a lost treatment that has been replaced by the use of new types of anticonvulsants, it is still recommended to patients to this day. A ketogenic diet is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate based diet that patients are typically asked to follow in conjunction with their anticonvulsant medications. This diet was designed in order to mimic many of the effects that starvation has on the metabolic functioning of the body. By limiting the amount of carbohydrates and increasing the amount of exogenous fats available to the metabolism, the body will create an excess of water-soluble compounds known as ketone bodies. Although the mechanism of action is still unknown, it is believed that these excessive amounts of ketone bodies become the brain's main source of energy and in turn are able to suppress the frequency of seizure occurrence.
Congenital bilateral perisylvian syndrome (CBPS) is a rare neurological disease characterized by paralysis of certain facial muscles and epileptic seizures.
Patients with ICOE-G need prophylactic treatment mainly with carbamazepine or other antiepileptic drugs licensed for focal seizures. A slow reduction in the dose of medication 2 or 3 years after the last visual or other minor or major seizure should be advised, but if visual seizures reappear, treatment should be restored.
There is no cure for this condition. Treatment is supportive and varies depending on how symptoms present and their severity. Some degree of developmental delay is expected in almost all cases of M-CM, so evaluation for early intervention or special education programs is appropriate. Rare cases have been reported with no discernible delay in academic or school abilities.
Physical therapy and orthopedic bracing can help young children with gross motor development. Occupational therapy or speech therapy may also assist with developmental delays. Attention from an orthopedic surgeon may be required for leg length discrepancy due to hemihyperplasia.
Children with hemihyperplasia are thought to have an elevated risk for certain types of cancers. Recently published management guidelines recommend regular abdominal ultrasounds up to age eight to detect Wilms' tumor. AFP testing to detect liver cancer is not recommended as there have been no reported cases of hepatoblastoma in M-CM patients.
Congenital abnormalities in the brain and progressive brain overgrowth can result in a variety of neurological problems that may require intervention. These include hydrocephalus, cerebellar tonsillar herniation (Chiari I), seizures and syringomyelia. These complications are not usually congenital, they develop over time often presenting complications in late infancy or early childhood, though they can become problems even later. Baseline brain and spinal cord MRI imaging with repeat scans at regular intervals is often prescribed to monitor the changes that result from progressive brain overgrowth.
Assessment of cardiac health with echocardiogram and EKG may be prescribed and arrhythmias or abnormalities may require surgical treatment.
Microlissencephaly (MLIS) is a rare congenital brain disorder that combines severe microcephaly (small head) with lissencephaly (smooth brain surface due to absent sulci and gyri). Microlissencephaly is a heterogeneous disorder i.e. it has many different causes and a variable clinical course. Microlissencephaly is a malformation of cortical development (MCD) that occurs due to failure of neuronal migration between the third and fifth month of gestation as well as stem cell population abnormalities. Numerous genes have been found to be associated with microlissencephaly, however, the pathophysiology is still not completely understood.
The combination of lissencephaly with severe congenital microcephaly is designated as microlissencephaly only when the cortex is abnormally thick. If such combination exists with a normal cortical thickness (2.5 to 3 mm), it is known as "microcephaly with simplified gyral pattern" (MSGP). Both MLIS and MSGP have a much more severe clinical course than microcephaly alone. They are inherited in autosomal recessive manner. Prior to 2000, the term “microlissencephaly” was used to designate both MLIS and MSGP.
The prognosis for Rolandic seizures is invariably excellent, with probably less than 2% risk of developing absence seizures and less often GTCS in adult life.
Remission usually occurs within 2–4 years from onset and before the age of 16 years. The total number of seizures is low, the majority of patients having fewer than 10 seizures; 10–20% have just a single seizure. About 10–20% may have frequent seizures, but these also remit with age.
Children with Rolandic seizures may develop usually mild and reversible linguistic, cognitive and behavioural abnormalities during the active phase of the disease. These may be worse in children with onset of seizures before 8 years of age, high rate of occurrence and multifocal EEG spikes.
The development, social adaptation and occupations of adults with a previous history of Rolandic seizures were found normal.
Microlissencephaly is listed in Orphanet database as a rare disease. There is no much information available about the epidemiology of microlissencepahly in literature. A PhD thesis has estimated the prevalence of microlissencepahly in South–Eastern Hungary between July 1992 and June 2006 to be a case every 91,000 live births (0.11:10,000).
Many anticonvulsant oral medications are available for the management of temporal lobe seizures. Most anticonvulsants function by decreasing the excitation of neurons, for example, by blocking fast or slow sodium channels or by modulating calcium channels; or by enhancing the inhibition of neurons, for example by potentiating the effects of inhibitory neurotransmitters like GABA.
In TLE, the most commonly used older medications are phenytoin, carbamazepine, primidone, valproate, and phenobarbital. Newer drugs, such as gabapentin, topiramate, levetiracetam, lamotrigine, pregabalin, tiagabine, lacosamide, and zonisamide promise similar effectiveness, with possibly fewer side-effects. Felbamate and vigabatrin are newer, but can have serious adverse effects so they are not considered as first-line treatments.
Up to one third of patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy will not have adequate seizure control with medication alone. For patients with medial TLE whose seizures remain uncontrolled after trials of several types of anticonvulsants (that is, the epilepsy is "intractable"), surgical excision of the affected temporal lobe may be considered.
The prognosis for children with lissencephaly varies depending on the malformation. Many individuals remain in a 3–5 month developmental level. Some children with lissencephaly will be able to roll over, sit, reach for objects, and smile socially. Aspiration and respiratory disease are the most common causes of illness or death. In the past, life expectancy was said to be around two years of age. However, with advances in seizure control, and treatments for respiratory illness, most children live well beyond that age. With other advances in therapy, and the broader availability of services and equipment, some children with lissencephaly are able to walk with varying degrees of assistance and to perform other functions once thought too advanced.
Prognosis varies widely depending on severity of symptoms, degree of intellectual impairment, and associated complications. Because the syndrome is rare and so newly identified, there are no long term studies.