New research supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) shows that the anticonvulsant medication gabapentin, which is used for certain types of seizures, can be an effective treatment for the pain and other symptoms associated with the common, often hard-to-treat chronic pain disorder, fibromyalgia.

Richard Idro, M.M.E.D., of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kilifi, Kenya and colleagues conducted a study to determine the incidence and neurological involvement of African children with acute falciparum malaria (a severe type of malaria).

Peter Orlean and Anant K. Menon describe how a lipid that helps proteins attach to cell membranes is made. The protein, called glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI), is important because people with defective GPI can develop seizures, have heart attacks, and acquire a hemolytic condition in which red blood cells are destroyed.

Data from two clinical trials presented today at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) meeting suggest that an investigational once daily extended release formulation of Lamictal® (lamotrigine) is effective as add-on treatment in patients with partial epilepsy with and without secondary generalization.

In more than a third of women with epilepsy, seizures fluctuate across the menstrual cycle, due in part to continually fluctuating effects of estrogen on the neural circuitry in the hippocampus, a region of the brain involved in learning and memory - and in epileptic seizures.

Researchers have long recognized that for learning and memory to take place, certain genes must be activated to alter neuron activity inside the brain. Disruptions in normal gene expression within these neurons can lead to alarming consequences, such as seizures and epilepsy.