By Thomas S. May
RHODES, GREECE -- June 20, 2007 -- Levetiracetam, a novel antiepileptic drug (AED) appears to be safe and effective as add-on therapy in a large proportion of patients with generalised epilepsy who failed to respond to other AEDs, researchers reported here at the annual Meeting of the European Neurological Society (ENS).
"Even though the majority of people with epilepsy can be treated effectively with one of the older antiepileptic medicines, a significant proportion do not respond readily to treatment, and many of those who do respond experience unacceptable side effects which affect their quality of life," said Savvas di Papacostas, MD, senior consultant neurologist, Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics, Nicosia, Cyprus. "Therefore, there is still a need to develop new medicines that will help treat those who do not respond to the traditional therapies, as well as those who do respond, but experience side effects," he added.
To investigate the efficacy and tolerability of a relatively new AED levetiracetam (LEV), as add-on therapy in patients with treatment-resistant generalized epilepsy, a team of researchers led by Dr. Papacostas performed a retrospective study of 12 patients with pharmaco-resistant epilepsy treated with LEV for 12 months. Eight of the patients had symptomatic generalized epilepsy (SGE) and four patients had primary generalized epilepsy (PGE).
Patients received LEV (up to 3,000 mg per day) in addition to an average of 2.4 other anticonvulsants. All subjects had complete physical and neurological examinations, as well as hematological, biochemical, and urinary investigations at entry and at study completion.
After 12 months of treatment, 62.5% of the patients suffering from SGE and 75% of the patients suffering from PGE experienced a 50% or greater reduction in the number of seizures. Two patients (16.71%) became seizure-free, and four patients (33.3%) had a seizure reduction of 75% or greater.
Only two patients dropped out of the study, due to lack of efficacy, adverse events, or both. There were no significant changes from baseline hematological, biochemical and urinary parameters in any of the patients.
These results show that levetiracetam has efficacy in both symptomatic and primary generalised epilepsy, the investigators concluded. They also noted that levetiracetam was well tolerated by the majority of patients.
[Presentation title: Efficacy and Tolerability of Levetiracetam During One-year Follow-up as Addon Therapy in Patients With Treatment-resistant Generalised Epilepsy. Abstract O196]
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