Abstracts

Rationale: Behavioral disorders in people affected by epilepsy are a major concern and can enormously impact patients’ daily activities and quality of life. Additionally, most of the antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are associated with psycho-cognitive effects and often with psychiatric side effects, including irritability, anger, agitation, aggressive behavior and depression. The aim of this study is to evaluate changes in the anger status in patients with focal epilepsy who start treatment with Eslicarbazepine acetate (ESL). Methods: A multicenter prospective study of patients with focal epilepsy from eight Spanish hospitals, who met the following criteria:  ≥ 18 years old, certain diagnostic of focal epilepsy and ≤2 antiepileptic drugs at baseline visit. Patients were switched to ESL at screening and remain on monotherapy or bitherapy. All patients completed the State-Trait Anger with the Expression Inventory 2TM (Staxi-2TM), hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Quality of Life in epilepsy inventory (QOLIE-10) at baseline by the time of starting ESL and in the final follow-up between three and six months after the screening visit. Results: 70 patients were included, mean age was 49 years old (range 18-84); 52.9% were man; 53.6% had a temporal lobe epilepsy; 48.6% were of unknown etiology. Patient started ESL due to side effects of the previous AEDs (54.9%) and lack of efficacy (43.1%). 64.3% were on ESL monotherapy. The mean frequency of seizure at baseline was 3.25 per month that decrease significantly up to 1.6 in those patients that were evaluated at the 3rd month only (p=0.002). Levetiracetam was the drug combined with ESL in 75% of those patients on bitherapy.The anger expression index improved significantly in the whole group (p=0.003) mainly due to the improvement showed at the anger trait (p < 0.001) at the follow up. But not clinically significance was found when compared different factors such as seizure control, monotherapy, age or sex. Moreover, a significant improvement in anxiety (p=0.017) and QOLIE-10 (p=0.018) scales was seen in patients at the following up period. Conclusions: The use of ESL does not adversely influence or affect over the anger control. Switching the antiepileptic treatment to ESL to mono or bitherapy might facilitate seizure control and a decrease of side effects that could affect in the behavioral and emotional symptoms control. Funding: The research received the support from BIAL.