STUDY: LORAZEPAM BLOCKS SEIZURES

An anti-anxiety drug called lorazepam can prevent repeat seizures in
alcoholics, a study found.

``If you don't get this, you're more than 10 times more likely to have
another seizure,'' said Dr. Gail D'Onofrio, a professor of emergency
medicine at Yale University.

Seizures cause tremors and loss of consciousness and can lead to death
or serious injury. They occur -- usually during alcohol withdrawal --
in about 1 million of the 10 million adult American alcoholics,
sending about 400,000 to emergency rooms each year, according to
D'Onofrio. About 60 percent of those have multiple seizures, usually
within six hours.

D'Onofrio ran the study during the mid-1990s, while she was an
emergency room doctor at Boston Medical Center.

She found that only three of the 100 alcoholics who were given
lorazepam after being brought to the ER following a seizure had
another one within six hours, compared with 21 of the 86 patients
given dummy pills.

Seven other members of the comparison group and one of those given
lorazepam were back in the ER with a second seizure within 48 hours.

The study was reported in Thursday's New England Journal of
Medicine.

Seizures can prove fatal if a victim falls and hits his head or is
stricken while driving.

Other drugs tested have failed to block recurrences, so emergency room
doctors either admit such patients to the hospital for observation,
inflating the cost of care, or release them and cross their fingers.

``This is a significant improvement,'' and many ER doctors will adopt
it, said Dr. Richard K. Fuller, director of clinical and prevention
research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.