Epilepsy 1093 The LaLiMo Trial: lamotrigine compared with levetiracetam in the initial 26 weeks of monotherapy for focal and generalised epilepsyd–an open-label, prospective, randomised controlled multicenter study F Rosenow, C Schade-Brittinger, N Burchardi, S Bauer, K M Klein, Y Weber, H Lerche, S Evers, S Kovac, S Hallmeyer-Elgner, G Winkler, J Springub, M Niedhammer, E Roth, I Eisensehr, J ...

Monotherapy remains the standard initial therapy of epilepsy, but when the first antiepileptic drug (AED) fails, combination therapy may be considered. The choice of combination therapy should take into consideration pharmacokinetic interactions, as well as pharmacodynamic interactions related to mechanism of action. There is evidence that an AED combination with different mechanisms of action ...

epilepsy is a common neurologic disorder affecting approximately 1% of the population. the prevalence of active epilepsy in kerman,iran is 7.87/1000 individuals. the past decade has brought many advances to the treatment of epilepsy, including many new pharmacological agents. lamotrigine is one of the new antiepileptic drugs. lamotrigine has many side effects; the most important of which are al...

PURPOSE To evaluate therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of lamotrigine (LTG) with establishment of individual therapeutic thresholds (TT) in outpatients of a tertiary epilepsy centre on monotherapy. METHODS In the outpatient clinic of the Danish Epilepsy Centre, Dianalund, all patients treated in 2004 with LTG monotherapy were identified. Patients who had not reported seizures or adverse reacti...

The completion of three recent large-scale, double-blind controlled acute trials in bipolar I depression has improved our understanding of the management of major depressive episodes associated with bipolar disorder. In contrast to the cross-over designs used in the early studies of lithium in bipolar depression, the designs utilized in these recent studies have employed random assignment to pa...

Lacosamide is a new-generation antiseizure medication that is approved for use as an adjunctive treatment and monotherapy in focal epilepsy. Its use in generalized epilepsy, however, has not been adequately evaluated in controlled trials. We report a 67-year-old woman who experienced new-onset myoclonic seizures after initiation of lacosamide. We presume that she had an undiagnosed generalized ...

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety of the newer antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) during pregnancy. METHODS The study population was pregnant women who enrolled in the North American AED Pregnancy Registry between 1997 and 2011. Data on AED use and maternal characteristics were collected through phone interviews at enrollment, at 7 months' gestation, and postpartum. Malformations were confirmed by medic...

OBJECTIVE Antiepileptic drug (AED) treatment failures may occur because there is insufficient drug in the brain or because of a lack of relevant therapeutic response. Until now it has not been possible to measure these factors. It has been recently shown that the combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) can measure the effects of drugs in healthy vol...

A number of clinical trials that test the efficacy and safety of the newer antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have recently been concluded. Two dose-response trials in inpatients with refractory partial seizures and outpatients with newly diagnosed partial epilepsy established the efficacy of gabapentin as monotherapy. Lamotrigine was found to have efficacy similar to that of phenytoin and carbamazepin...

We compared persistence of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) including carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, gabapentin, lamotrigine, topiramate, valproic acid, and phenytoin in an Asian population with epilepsy.A retrospective cohort study was conducted by analyzing Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). Adult epilepsy patients newly prescribed with AEDs between 2005 and 2009 were incl...