• Posted August 26, 2025

It Takes About A Year To Get Epilepsy Under Control For Most, Study Says

It takes about a year for people with focal epilepsy to start finding some relief from anti-seizure medications, a new study says.

In all, 3 of 5 epilepsy patients (60%) do achieve freedom from seizures thanks to a drug regimen – but it takes most an average of 12 months to reach that goal, researchers reported Aug. 25 in JAMA Neurology.

That’s because it takes some time for doctors to dial in the right drug and dosage for them, researchers said.

“Our findings suggest that those with focal epilepsy should expect a long adjustment period as their health care provider determines the best treatment regimen for them,” senior researcher Dr. Jacqueline French, a neurologist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, said in a news release.

Focal epilepsy occurs when nerve cells in a specific brain region — known as the focal point —  send out a sudden, excessive burst of electrical signals, researchers said in background notes. About 60% of patients with epilepsy have this form of the disease.

For the study, researchers tracked the progress of nearly 450 men and women newly diagnosed with epilepsy between 2012 and 2020. These folks were treated at 34 epilepsy centers in the U.S., Europe and Australia.

Patients were considered seizure-free if they did not have one for at least a year, researchers said.

Results showed that 63% of the patients experienced ongoing or even worsening seizures during their first year of therapy. 

The median time until people first achieved seizure freedom was 12 months among all the patients, results show. Median means it took longer for half of the patients, less time for the rest.

Of the 60% who wound up seizure-free, about 84% never suffered a relapse, researchers found.

About 23% of the patients had treatment-resistant epilepsy that did not respond well to drug treatment, researchers said.

Notably, those who had seizures only a few times a year were more likely to respond to medication than those who had a seizure every week, results show.

Patients with a history of psychological problems like anxiety or depression were nearly twice as likely to have drug-resistant epilepsy, researchers added.

Neurologists usually start epilepsy patients on levetiracetam, a drug that can treat many types of seizures and has few interactions with other drugs, researchers noted.

However, they might want to rethink that strategy, French suggested. Only a quarter of the 57% patients initially prescribed levetiracetam became seizure-free on their first try.

On the other hand, the fact that so many people overall ended up seizure-free shows that the current drug arsenal for epilepsy remains potent, she said.

“Our results show that the best way to a new treatment plan is sometimes through making better use of the tools we already have instead of always searching for the next breakthrough drug,” French said.

More information

Johns Hopkins Medicine has more on focal seizures.

SOURCES: NYU Langone Health, news release, Aug. 25, 2025; JAMA Psychiatry, Aug. 25, 2025