Happy New Year to all JNNP readers!

In order to ensure that we start 2015 with an optimistic outlook, I thought that the first post of this year should concern a clinical trial with a positive outcome! Epilepsy is a common and very debilitating condition which leads to significant impairments in quality of life. While a lot of patients with epilepsy can be successfully treated with medication, there remains a significant minority in whom seizures remain resistant to anticonvulsant drugs. There is little consensus on how these patients should be managed. Surgical treatment may be useful if a seizure focus is identified, but in other patients in whom the seizure origin remains elusive, treatment can be problematic.

There has been a vast literature that has focused on the role of dietary strategies in patients with drug resistant epilepsy and most of these studies have focussed on use of the ‘ketogenic diet’. The use of fish oil has also been considered, particularly given studies in animal models that have demonstrated a possible benefit at low doses.

In this issue of JNNP, DeGiorgio and colleagues undertook a randomised placebo-controlled diet of fish oil in 24 patients with drug resistant epilepsy http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/86/1/65.abstract . Their study demonstrated a possible benefit of fish oil at low doses, but no significant benefit at higher doses. This is consistent with studies in animal models which have shown anticonvulsant effects at low doses and proconvulsant effects at higher doses.

As most neurologists would know, drug resistant epilepsy ruins quality of life for sufferers. The present study is encouraging and may provide the impetus for larger randomised studies.