Abstracts

Rationale: All antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are potential mood and behavior modifiers. Our aim was to assess the state and trait of anger, adjusted by epilepsy type, seizure control, anxiety- depression state and quality of life in patients treated with brivaracetam (BRV). Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that evaluated prospectively consecutive patients with partial onset seizures. Patients had ≥5 years of epilepsy and were taking between 1 and 3 AEDs. We recruited patients under current treatment with BRV from a phase III clinical trial (NCT01339559) and a control group. In this control group we included consecutive out patients attending to our Epilepsy Unit. In the BRV group, patients with levetiracetam (LEV) were excluded per protocol design. The following tests were assessed as part of the protocol in the same medical visit: State-Trait Anger with the Expression Inventory–2™ (STAXI–2™), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31). Scales were converted to T scores (normalized scores with mean value of 50 and deviation type of ±10) and corrected by age and gender. Lower scores had worse performances. Results: We recruited 39 patients. Mean age was 47.3 years (range: 18-75), male 43.6%. Symptomatic cases were 66% and 52% had temporal lobe epilepsy. AEDs polytherapy was present in 82.1% of cases (100% BRV vs. 68.2% control group). Most frequent AEDs used were BRV (43.6%) and LEV (33.3%). Neither demographic (gender, age) nor clinical (epilepsy type, seizure frequency, years of epilepsy and number of AEDs used) differences were observed between groups. QOLIE-31 and HADS scores showed no differences between both groups. No statistically significant differences were seen in the STAXI–2™, while scores in the anger expression index, state, and trait were higher in the BRV patients than the control group (Table 1). When compared with the subgroup of LEV patients, STAXI–2™ showed again no statistically significant differences, as well as, newly, higher scores in the BRV group (Figure 1). Conclusions: In the absence of other influencing factors such as epilepsy control, mood disorders or deteriorated quality of life, these data suggest that BRV may not have an impact on the levels of anger of epileptic patients. However, it is difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions since the original study was not powered for this particular analysis and the small number of patients. Funding: NO FUNDING