Abstracts

Rationale: Eslicarbazepine Acetate (ESL) is an antiepileptic drug (AED) that has demonstrated to be efficient in controlling seizures in focal epilepsy, with a very good cognitive and pharmacokinetic profile. Brain tumor-related epilepsy (BRTE) is a special kind of focal epilepsy with a good response to sodium channels blockers. The object of this study is to determine the tolerance to and activity of ESL in adult patients with BTRE Methods: Retrospective review of the medical records of two epilepsy centers, searching for all patients diagnosed with BTRE and treated with ESL as an add-on treatment. We reviewed several variables -being seizure frequency and adverse events occurrence the most important ones- prior and after the addition of ESL. Results: We found 17 patients who fulfilled the inclusion criteria, 53% of which were women. The tumor was diagnosed at the age of 35 years on average (range 12-53), and 60% of the patients were diagnosed with epilepsy at the same time. We identified different types of tumors: astrocytoma (71%), metastasis (23%) and meningioma (6%). Twelve patients (71%) needed surgery and 7 patients (41%) were treated with chemotherapy. Regarding epilepsy, most of the cases presented a refractory partial epilepsy (41% of them presenting secondary generalized seizures (SGS) in addition to complex or simple partial seizures) and they had taken an average of 2'7 drugs (range 1-6) before starting an ESL treatment. The follow-up after starting this treatment was superior to 6 months in all patients. Mean seizure number per month in the three months prior to the introduction of ESL was 6.8 (33% of patients presented more than 10 seizures/month). At the 6 months follow-up, 11 subjects (64%) had experienced a seizure reduction of at least 50%, 7 of them (41%) were seizure-free and none of the patients continued presenting SGS. Only 2 patients suffered of side-effects related to ESL. No patients discontinued ESL because of side-effects and only one did so due to lack of efficacy. Conclusions: This study indicates that ESL may represent a valid and safe alternative as an add-on drug in patients with BTRE. However, the small number of patients included doesn't enable us to analyze data comparing groups of different kind of tumors, with and without chemoherapy, etc. Larger samples are necessary in order to draw definitive conclusions about which kind of BTRE patients would benefit the most from ESL as an add-on treatment, or even as a monotherapy. Funding: No funding