The Need to Look Beyond Seizures When Treating DEEs

Developmental and epileptic encephalopathies are a group of rare disorders that are characterized by frequent seizures that often don’t respond to existing medications. These are complex conditions that involve progressive cognitive and behavioral manifestations that can pose significant burdens on patients and their families. In both clinical practice and within the biopharmaceutical industry, there has been a tendency to focus on seizure control, while often overlooking the non-seizure burdens of developmental and epileptic encephalopathies. We spoke to Amelie Lothe, global medical community head for rare epilepsies at UCB, about the need to view these developmental and epileptic encephalopathies as complex neurodevelopmental conditions, the need to go beyond seizure frequency when it comes to clinical trial outcome measures, and what drug developers can do to improve their research focus to include broader patient and caregiver experiences.