Experience with rufinamide in a pediatric population: a single center's experience.
Rufinamide is a new antiepileptic drug recently approved as adjunctive treatment for generalized seizures in Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. We undertook a retrospective analysis of 77 patients with refractory epilepsy and receiving rufinamide to evaluate the drug's efficacy, tolerability, safety, and dosing schedules. It appeared efficacious in diverse epilepsy syndromes, with the highest responder rate in focal cryptogenic epilepsies (81.1% of patients with >50% response rate), and in diverse seizure types, with the highest responder rate in tonic/atonic and partial seizures (48.6% and 46.7% of patients with >50% response rate, respectively). Rufinamide was well tolerated: only 13% of patients developed side effects necessitating drug withdrawal. These findings suggest that rufinamide may possess good efficacy and tolerability, and that its efficacy may extend to epilepsy syndromes beyond Lennox-Gastaut, including both partial and generalized epilepsy syndromes.
Vendrame
Martina
M
Department of Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Loddenkemper
Tobias
T
Gooty
Vasu D
VD
Takeoka
Masanori
M
Rotenberg
Alexander
A
Bergin
Ann M
AM
Eksioglu
Yaman Z
YZ
Poduri
Annapurna
A
Duffy
Frank H
FH
Libenson
Mark
M
Bourgeois
Blaise F
BF
Kothare
Sanjeev V
SV
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000927:Anticonvulsants / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D010372:Pediatrics; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012640:Seizures / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000503:physiopathology; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014230:Triazoles / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D055815:Young Adult
D000927:Anticonvulsants; D014230:Triazoles; C079703:rufinamide