Terminology of medicines used to control seizure disorders: 2024 ILAE Recommendations and profile of real-world term use

Background. The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) has provided recommendations on the terminology of medicines for control of seizure disorders, which should be adapted into different languages. Objective: to evaluate the usage profile of terms describing the effects of medicines used in patients with epilepsy. Material and methods. The search query analysis systems Google Trends and Yandex Wordstat as well as PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar and eLibrary databases were used to evaluate the general public and professional usage profile, respectively. The following terms in Russian and English were studied: “antiepileptic”, “antiepileptic drug”, “antiseizure”, “antiseizure drug”. In order to ascertain a prevailing opinion within professional and patient communities, a questionnaire survey was conducted on the public online resources of the non-profit partnership “The Association of Epileptologists and Patients” carried out via the cloud-based cross-platform social media as well as instant messaging service Telegram and the social media platform VK. Results. In the English-speaking internet segment, the term “antiepileptic” is used more than 5 times frequently than “antiseizure” by the general public. Conversely, in the Russian-language segment, the term “antiseizure” is almost 2.5 times more common. The term “antiepileptic” is more prevalent in scientific community in both segments. This finding aligns with the profile of terminology usage observed among epileptologists and epilepsy patients. The questionnaire survey results revealed that 56.42% of 179 respondents were in favor of the terms “antiepileptic drug”, “AED” and “antiepileptic therapy”, whereas as few as 17.32% of those endorsed the ILAE-proposed terminology. Conclusion. In light of the established practice of terminology use in both professional scientific community and among practicing epileptologists and epileptic patients, as well as the differences in the semantics of English- and Russian-language terms and the identified lack of precision in the ILAE definition of epilepsy, it can be concluded that for the Russian-speaking population, the terms “antiepileptic drug”, “AED” are more preferable rather than the terms “antiseizure medication”, “ASM”. Additionally, it is preferable to use the terms “convulsive ictus” and “epileptic ictus” due to negative connotation with term “seizure” in Russian. The terms “antiseizure” and “antiepileptic” should not be regarded as mutually exclusive in the context of treatment that has a direct impact on epilepsy course. Finally, it is necessary to further refine epilepsy definition and classification.