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Vigabatrin in drug-resistant partial epilepsy

A 5-year follow-up study

Department of Neurology (Drs. Sivenius, Ylinen, and Riekkinen), University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Finland; the Department of Neurology (Dr. Murros), Central Hospital of Central Finland, Finland; and Merrell Dow Research Institute (Dr. Mumford), Winnersh, UK.

We treated 75 patients with drug-resistant complex partial seizures and secondarily generalized seizures with vigabatrin as additional therapy for 6 months. Twenty-one patients either showed no benefit from vigabatrin treatment or had side effects. The remaining 54 patients entered into the long-term study. The median monthly seizure frequency decreased from 12.5 at baseline to 3.3 at the 3-month visit, and was 3.9 after 5 years of therapy in 28 patients who continued using the drug after the 5-year period. During 5 years of therapy with vigabatrin, 26 patients have withdrawn from the study because of various reasons: loss of efficacy (14), suspected side effects (5), noncompliance (3), administrative reasons (2), pregnancy (1), and epilepsy surgery (1). In all, 19 patients had a greater than 50% seizure frequency reduction at 5 years, representing 35% of the 54 patients who entered the long-term study, or 25% of the 75 patients who were initially recruited into the efficacy study.

Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Juhani Sivenius, ADD Program, Department of Pharmacology, 421 Wakara Way, Suite 125, Salt Lake City Utah 84108.

Received July 24, 1990. Accepted for publication in final form September 26, 1990.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				R. C. Nabbout, C. Chiron, J. Mumford, C. Dumas, and O. Dulac Vigabatrin in Partial Seizures in Children J Child Neurol, April 1, 1997; 12(3): 172 - 177. [Abstract] [PDF]