PROVIDENCE — The Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Providence and Birmingham, Alabama, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham are collaborating on a $3.6 million study of the cause of seizures induced by traumatic brain injuries.
The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, will examine whether a form of cognitive behavior therapy – a short-term, goal-oriented psychotherapy approach to problem-solving – could be effective in reducing the frequency and/or severity of seizures in those with traumatic brain injury, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
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Cognitive behavior therapy, widely used for improving mental health, focuses on developing coping strategies to treat problems and decrease symptoms.
“Individuals can develop pathological responses, including seizures, from major, life-changing events such as traumatic brain injury,” said Dr. Jerzy Szaflarski, director of the Epilepsy Center in the UAB School of Medicine and co-principal investigator of the study. “The overall goal of the study is to see if cognitive behavior therapy will modify brain changes and response to stressful events, and whether these changes will result in improved seizure control.”
The study teams will enroll Veteran and civilian patients with a history of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, divided into three groups of 88 patients each. One group will consist of patients with TBI without a history of seizures, another group will have TBI with epileptic seizures, and the last will have TBI with nonepileptic seizures.
Patients with seizures will receive cognitive behavior informed therapy for 12 weeks, administered by trained medical professionals. All patients will receive functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, at baseline and again at approximately 14 weeks. An earlier study conducted by LaFrance and Szaflarski in 36 patients showed that cognitive behavior therapy improved seizure control in patients with nonepileptic seizures.
“Non-pharmacologic approaches for seizures are gaining acceptance as a therapy,” said Dr. W. Curt LaFrance, co-principal investigator and member of the VA RR&D Center for Neuro-restoration and Neurotechnology, associate professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Neurology at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School, director of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurology at Rhode Island Hospital and neuropsychiatrist at the Providence VA Medical Center. “Building off of our previous pilot studies, this will be the first large-scale examination of the neuroimaging brain signals in response to an intervention for patients with seizures.”
The research is being funded through an Idea Development Award by the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs’ Epilepsy Research Program. The ERP was initiated in 2015 to develop an understanding of the magnitude of post-traumatic epilepsy within the military and to expand research into the basic mechanisms by which traumatic brain injury produces epilepsy.
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkowski@PBN.com.
