Five-year old Karen Macon has energy to spare, but that wasn’t always the case.
"She'd wake up tired every morning, dark circles under her eyes," said Karen's mother, Annie Macon.
Doctors diagnosed Karen with a rare, genetic form of epilepsy, called autosomal dominant nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy.
"Every single night she was having an average of 20 seizures," said Dr. Ki Hyeong Lee, medical director of the Comprehensive Epileptic Center at Florida Hospital for Children, Orlando.
"We tried probably seven different anti-convulsive medications," Macon explained. "None of them worked. We tried the ketogenic diet. It didn't work."
Lee said Karen's genetic mutation appears to be linked to a nicotine deficiency in the body.
Lee also found evidence a nicotine patch helped stopped seizures in an adult with the same condition.
"Nicotine patch does not have all the bad issues associated with smoking itself," Lee said.
Under Lee's guidance, Karen's mother placed one-sixteenth of a commercial patch on her daughter's arm before bed.
An overnight followup showed no evidence of any seizures.
"I don't see the dark circles anymore and she makes it all the way to bed time and beyond without a nap, so I know that it's working," said Macon.
Lee said the nicotine treatment was used only for patients with this genetic mutation. He said no research has been done to determine the long-term effects of using the tiny nicotine dose, but so far, the benefits outweigh the risks for Karen.
As a result of the treatment, the Macons have been able to relocate from a major city to a tiny town on the West Coast. They had been unwilling to do that while Karen's seizures were uncontrolled.
from 69News:Home http://www.wfmz.com/lifestyle/Health-Beat/Health-Beat-Nicotine-stops-seizures/30439162
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