Abstracts

Rationale: Though big effort has been made in last 20 years by developing new drugs, 20-30% of patients with epilepsy still remain refractory to medical treatment. The need of new antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) is still declared as actual. Lacosamide is the latest marketed AED in Slovakia (LCS) and was introduced into clinical praxis there in April 2009. Methods: 34 patients with refractory partial epilepsy were treated with lacosamide as add-on therapy at least for 12 months, 25 of them were treated for 24 months. Mean age in this group of patients was 34.4 years, mean duration of epilepsy 20.9 years. 18/34 (54.5%) of patients used 7 and more AEDs before LCS, 6/34 (18.2%) used 6 antiepileptics and the rest of patients 5 and less AEDs before LCS. The mean therapeutic dose was 240mg of LCS per day. The effectivity was calculated as RR (responder rate, at minimum 50% reduction in seizure frequency) independently in both groups of patients. The portion of seizure free (SF) and more than 75% reduction in seizure frequency was also calculated. Results: RR of 50% by 34 patients treated for 12 months. By patients treated for 24 months (25 persons) the RR was of 48%. By patients treated for 12 months there were 3/34 (8,8%) of SF patients, by patients treated for 24 months there were 2/25 (8%) of SF patients. The most frequent adverse events observed included ataxia, dizziness, diplopia and seizure aggravation (8% each), followed by fatigue, headache, tremor and diarrhoea (every category 4%). Conclusions: LCS showed promising effectivity and good tolerability by patients with farmacoresistant partial onset epilepsy, with sustained results over the 12 and 24 month period of follow-up. The presented results are in line with other preclinical and clinical studies already published.