Using Autoinjectors to Treat Seizures

 http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/february2012/02272012seizure.htm

The article describes the results of a study exploring the use of autoinjectors to give anticonvulsants to people with epilepsy. Autoinjectors are useful for situations when putting an IV in a patient isn’t practical, as with a seizure. Two different drugs were compared using this method: lorazepam and midazolam. Lorazepam is the standard for IV treatment, but it was not as suitable for injection into muscle instead of directly into blood (although it was able to stop seizures in 63% of patients before they reached the hospital). This is crucial for autoinjector use because they inject into muscle. Midazolam, however, proved very effective in this scenario despite its lack of use in IV situations. 73% of patients who received midazolam via autoinjector stopped seizing before they reached the hospital and were less likely to need hospitalization.

The study covered a wide variety of ages and 400 patients over several hospitals.

I found this article particularly interesting because my mother has epilepsy. She is able to tell when she is about to have a seizure, but all we could do was prepare pillows so she could lie down and get ready to call the hospital. If an anticonvulsant version of an EpiPen were created, this would allow us to actually act in a meaningful way while we waited for the ambulance to arrive, stopping the seizure before it could cause much damage.