Epilepsy syndromes

If you or your child are diagnosed with an epilepsy syndrome, it can give you important information about your condition. It means doctors will have a better idea of the best way to treat the epilepsy.

It also gives information on how you might be affected. This includes how long your epilepsy is likely to last, and whether you will need extra support. This could be for related health conditions or development problems.

There may be research studies that you or your child can take part in for some epilepsy syndromes. Your paediatrician or paediatric neurologist may talk about this with you.

Doctors use information about a person’s epilepsy to decide if they have a certain syndrome.

Not everyone who has seizures will get a diagnosis of a syndrome. This could be because there’s not enough information to give a definite diagnosis, or because the symptoms don’t fit a particular syndrome. Instead, your doctor may just tell you the type of seizures you’re getting. Knowing your seizure or epilepsy type can still help doctors to work out the best treatments for you.

The information they use to diagnose an epilepsy syndrome can include:

• The type of seizures the person has
• The age when the seizures started
• The cause of their epilepsy
• EEG test results (these record brain activity), brain scans and sometimes genetic tests
• Whether the person has any other symptoms, like learning disabilities or problems with speech or movement

The tests doctors use, and signs they look for, depend on the type of syndrome they think someone may have. We have more information about diagnosis on each of our individual pages.

On our Just for Kids page, we have information to help your child understand their seizures.

Epilepsy syndromes can be described and categorised in different ways. The most common way to categorise them is the age at which they usually start. This follows a classification system developed by the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE). The ILAE is a world-wide organisation of epilepsy professionals.

They can also be described depending on the type of seizures involved, and whether there are any development problems. For example, they may be described as:

• Generalised, focal or generalised and focal combined
• Self-limited, if affected children are likely to grow out of it over time
• Developmental and epileptic encephalopathy, if it’s associated with development or learning problems

• Dravet syndrome
• Early-infantile developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (EIDEE)
• Gelastic seizures with hypothalamic hamartoma (GS-HH)
• Genetic epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+)
• Glucose transporter 1 deficiency syndrome (Glut1DS)
• Infantile epileptic spasms syndrome
• Myoclonic epilepsy in infancy
• Self-limited (familial) infantile epilepsy
• Self-limited (familial) neonatal epilepsy
• Sturge-Weber syndrome

• Childhood absence epilepsy
• Epilepsy with eyelid myoclonia
• Epilepsy with myoclonic absence
• Epilepsy with myoclonic atonic seizures
• Lennox–Gastaut syndrome
• Self-limited epilepsy with autonomic seizures
• Self-limited epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes

• Epilepsy with generalised tonic-clonic seizures alone
• Juvenile absence epilepsy
• Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy
• Unverricht-Lundborg disease

Aicardi Syndrome

Angelman Syndrome

Limbic encephalitis

Landau Kleffner syndrome on the Great Ormond Street Hospital website

Rasmussen syndrome or Rasmussen’s encephalitis

Rett UK

Ring 20 research and support

The Lily Foundation (for mitochondrial disease and other metabolic disorders)