Question
I was on Enbrel for about a year and a half. Soon after beginning the medicine, I began to have difficulty with my speech, mainly with talking in past tense. When trying to explain something, I would suddenly be unable to speak for about 15-20 seconds. This got progressively worse as time went on. My doctor sent me to a neurologist who thought that the speech episodes were small seizures. I had a MRI and EEG done and both were normal. Then I have a partial complex seizure, which trun into a generalized seizure, and another partial complex seizure about 2 months after that one. Since then I have stopped taking the Enbrel, and am on antiseizure meds, but still have small seizures with garbled speech, and diffuculty talking in and hearing past tense words. I feel this has been caused by the Enbrel, and would like to know if there have been other people who have suffered seizure disorders due to TNF inhibitors.
Answer
I am not aware of any reported association of TNF drugs and seizures. The neurologic problems have been multiple sclerosis like problems and an unusual problem called Guillian Barre Syndrome.
