Clinic Notes: Autism and Seizures

Approximately 25-30 percent of children with autism have seizures. And often the medications that are used to control the seizures have side effects that make behavior treatments, such as ABA, more difficult. Speech therapy and occupational therapy can also be adversely affected by seizure medications. At a recent Autism One/Generation Rescue Conference, a seizure survey asked parents of children with autism who also had seizures to evaluate traditional and non-traditional seizure treatments which had been tried on their children. For traditional anti-seizure drug treatment valproic acid, Levetiracetam, Lamotrigine and Ethosuximide were the most effective at controlling seizures and the least detrimental on cognition, language and behavior. For the non-traditional tanti-seizure treatments, the survey found that the ketogenic diet, the Atkins diet and gluten-free/casein-free diet were the most effective in controlling seizures and also were also helpful in treating, language and/or behavior.