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Epilepsy is a chronic illness affecting around 50 million people worldwide. Levetiracetam is an effective novel antiepileptic drug but can cause behavioural adverse events. A total of 10-15 per cent people with intellectual disability (ID) already present with Behaviour that Challenges (BtC). Brivaracetam is postulated to have a distinct pharmacological profile compared with levetiracetam which may result in fewer behavioural adverse events.

This paper presents two cases of people with epilepsy and ID being switched from levetiracetam to brivaracetam for reported behaviour adverse events.

The cases support that people with epilepsy and ID who are experiencing behavioural adverse events from levetiracetam can safely be switched to brivaracetam, resulting in significant reductions in BtC and potentially improved seizure control. Nevertheless, these results must be interpreted with caution, as aetiology for BtC in people with ID is often multifactorial.

This is one of the first papers to date, according to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to describe improved behavioural profile in people with ID and epilepsy when switching from levetiracetam to brivaracetam.

Issues related to disability and childhood are frequently examined across the social sciences and humanities. Many researchers conduct studies with disabled children as the focus of study, as research participants and/or as research drivers. Disabled children represent two categories of identified vulnerability, thus, requiring stringent ethical boundaries in terms of recruitment, consent, research methods, analysis, disclosure and knowledge mobilisation. Although many safeguards apply to research with all children, the focus on disability and disabled childhoods initiates further ethical scrutiny. In this chapter, the authors examine a number of ethical dilemmas that have emerged when conducting research with, and in relation to, disabled children. In particular, the authors will examine the roles of disabled children and youth in advancing research on policy and practice within education and care sectors. The authors query the possibilities and limitations that emerge when employing institutional ethnographic, participatory action and phenomenological research. The chapter unpacks some of the tricky tensions around asking children to speak about disability and share their experiences of disablement when disability is so frequently stigmatised. The authors examine the impacts of predetermined categories of impairment within quantitative research. Across methodologies, data collection based on assumptions of impairment can skew analyses towards a medicalised framework of disability, leaving little room for socio-cultural perspectives on disablement, including how these approaches trigger ethical issues around notions of representation and agency in research with disabled children.