Synopsis
The incidence of epilepsy is highest in infancy. Many infant epilepsies, such as infantile spasms, are very severe, with treatment-resistant seizures and major developmental impairments.
This Grand Round will cover advances in understanding of the causes of infant epilepsies, and how these advances have informed changes in investigation of aetiology and guided use of existing and novel treatments, to improve outcomes in these devastating conditions.

Speaker
Dr Katherine Howell is a paediatric neurologist and epileptologist at The Royal Children’s Hospital. Her research interests include epilepsy and neurogenetics.
She has recently submitted a PhD thesis through the University of Melbourne, having completed a population-based study of the incidence and causes of severe epilepsies of infancy. She has been involved in national and international collaborative studies of genetic epilepsies, and is the state lead for the epileptic encephalopathies flagship of the Australian Genomic Health Alliance.