Elizabeth Gaudio, a senior neuroscience major at Rhodes College and one of the first interns of the college's Le Bonheur Children's Hospital's Summer Plus Program, has jointly published a paper with the hospital's Chief of Pediatric Neurology, Dr, James Wheless, and Andrew Gienapp Le Bonheur's scientific editor.

The paper will appear in the Journal of Child Neurology titled "Perampanel Pharmacokinetics in Children: Correlation of Dose With Serum Concentrations." In what the authors call the largest real-world review of its kind, the study looked at the antiseizure drug perampanel regarding its concentration-effect relationships, concomitant drug interactions, and adverse effects for pediatric epilepsy patients younger than 12 years old.

The Summer Plus Program was established in partnership with Le Bonheur in 2017. At the hospital, Gaudio was assigned to shadow Dr. Wheless and follow the status of patients in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. There, she was able to learn about the relationship between patients' seizures and their EEGs in real time.

The researchers performed a retrospective medical chart review of children treated with perampanel and at least one other anti-seizure drug at Le Bonheur between January 2014 and May 2017. Patients in this population were either taking concomitant enzyme-inducing antiseizure drugs or non-enzyme-inducing antiseizure drugs.

Gaudio obtained institutional review board approval for the research, reviewed patients' charts for data, performed statistical analysis, and authored the first draft of the research article.

Gaudio, who is from Elmhurst, Illinois, plans to attend medical school.