• Salvatore Savasta, Mauro Budetta, Maria Valentina Spartà, Maria Luisa Carpentieri, Guido Trasimeni, Niki Zavras, Maria Pia Villa, and Pasquale Parisi.
• Department of Pediatrics, Pavia University Fondazione, IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo, Pavia, Italy.
• Epilepsy Behav. 2014 Aug 1;37:87-90.

AbstractWe describe three children with gelastic seizures without hypothalamic hamartoma whose seizures were characterized by typical laughing attacks associated or not with other seizure types. Ictal/interictal EEG and magnetic resonance imaging were performed. All three subjects showed a good response to carbamazepine therapy with complete seizure control in addition to a benign clinical and cognitive outcome. These three cases confirm that gelastic epilepsy without hypothalamic hamartoma, both in cryptogenic or symptomatic patients (one child showed a dysplastic right parietotemporal lesion), usually has a more benign natural history, and carbamazepine seems to be the most efficacious therapy to obtain both immediate and long-term seizure control. These findings need to be confirmed in a larger sample of children affected by gelastic epilepsy without hypothalamic hamartoma.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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