Background Cerebral palsy (CP) has been identified as one of the most important and common causes of childhood disabilities worldwide and is often accompanied by multiple comorbidities. CP is defined as a group of disorders of the development of movement and posture, causing activity limitation that are attributed to non-progressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain. The objective of our study was to describe main clinical pattern and motor impairments of our patients, and to evaluate the presence of risk factors and if there is a relation to the type of cerebral palsy. Methods Children with cerebral palsy were retrospectively enrolled over 2 years from the neurology outpatient clinics. Cerebral palsy risk factors and motor impairments were determined through caregiver interviews, review of medical records, and direct physical examination. Results One thousand children with cerebral palsy were enrolled. Subjects were 64.4% male, with a median age of 2.5 years. The risk factors for cerebral palsy in our study were antenatal (21%), natal and post-natal (30.5%), post-neonatal (17.1%), and unidentified (31.4%). Antenatal as CNS malformation (26.6%), maternal DM (17.6%), prolonged rupture of membrane (11.9%), maternal hemorrhage (10.4%), and pre-eclampsia (4.7%). Natal and post-natal as hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (28.5%), infection (16.3%), hyperbilirubinemia (12.7%), cerebrovascular accidents (8.8%), meconium aspiration (6.2%), and intracranial hemorrhage. Post-neonatal as CNS infection (34.5%), cerebrovascular accidents (28.6%), sepsis (23.9%), and intracranial hemorrhage (8.7%). Conclusions Cerebral palsy has different etiologies and risk factors. Further studies are necessary to determine optimal preventative strategies in these patients.

Background Epilepsy is one of the most widely recognized neurological disorders; unfortunately, twenty to thirty percent of patients do not get cured from epilepsy, despite many trials of antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy. Immunotherapy may be a viable treatment strategy in a subset of epileptic patients. The association between Toll-like receptor polymorphisms and epilepsy clarifies the role of the immune system in epilepsy and its response to the drug. Thus, this study will focus on the relation between TLR4 rs1927914, rs11536858, rs1927911SNPs, and epilepsy in an Egyptian case-control study to assess their link to antiepileptic drug response. Results According to TLR4 rs1927914, there is a significant association between the SNP and the development of epilepsy, as CC genotype is 15.3 times more at risk for developing epilepsy than TT genotype, and CT is 11.1 times more at risk for developing epilepsy than TT. Also, patients with CC genotypes are 6.3 times more at risk for developing primary epilepsy than TT genotype. According to rs11536858, there is a significant association between cases and control groups, as AA genotypes are found to be more at risk for developing epilepsy than GG genotypes. Also, there is a statistically significant association between clonazepam resistance and rs11536858, as p value < 0.001* with the highest frequency of TT genotypes at 4.3%. According to rs1927911, there are no significant results between the cases and the control groups or between drug-responsive and drug resistance. Conclusion Possible involvement of the Toll-like receptor clarifies the importance of innate immunity in initiating seizures and making neuronal hyperexcitability. In this work, multiple significant associations between TLR SNPs and epilepsy, epileptic phenotype, and drug-resistant epilepsy have been found. More studies with bigger sample sizes and different techniques with different SNPs are recommended to find the proper immunotherapy for epilepsy instead of the treatment by antiepileptic drugs.

Background Epilepsy is a chronic disease affecting about 2% of the population and is considered a serious neurological disease. Despite its good prognosis, 20–30% of epileptic patients were not cured of their seizures even with the many trials of antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy. The resistance mechanism is still unclear, maybe due to the effect of the genetic factors on the bioavailability of the drugs. Consequently, the association between therapy resistance and the presence of a gene called “multidrug resistance 1 (MDR1)” had been proposed. Thus, the present study aimed to understand the relationship between the genetic polymorphism of MDR1C3435T and the resistance to AEDs. Result A non-significant association was found between MDR1 C3435T single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and drug-resistant epilepsy. However, there was statistical significance in the association between the drug type and the genotype distribution, in cases that were maintained on sodium valproate and MDR1C3435T genotype. Conclusion Possible involvement of the MDR1 gene C 3435T polymorphism with sodium valproate resistance clarifies the importance of genetic variability in response to the drug and may help to find novel genetic therapy for epilepsy, by targeting the biological mechanisms responsible for epilepsy in each specific individual. Future studies with bigger sample sizes and in other racial populations will be necessary.

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