Cognitive development in children with Dravet syndrome

P>Slowing of cognitive skills represents one of the diagnostic criteria of Dravet syndrome. This Italian multicentric study aims at clarifying the roles of epilepsy and/or underlying genetic alteration in determining the cognitive outcome. The study includes infants that were either in follow-up (retrospective study: 26 cases) and newly diagnosed (prospective study: in progress). Our multicentric study shows that slowing of cognitive achievements becomes evident during the second year of life in all cases, and that the epilepsy phenotype indeed has a prognostic value. In this study the early appearance of absences and myoclonic seizures is associated with the worst cognitive outcome; whereas convulsive prolonged seizures do not seem to represent, per se, a bad prognostic factor for mental outcome. In this study, statistical analysis failed to reveal differences in the cognitive outcome with regard to the presence and type of SCN1A mutation.