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news.A study supported by UCB Pharma has demonstrated that administration with levetiracetam in people with newly diagnosed epilepsy experienced few, if any, seizures while taking the drug as a single therapy.
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The researchers said this gives hope to epilepsy patients who don't respond to or cannot tolerate existing treatments.
For the study, researchers assigned adults who had at least two seizures in the previous year to the drug levetiracetam or to controlled-release carbamazepine, a common epilepsy treatment.
While levetiracetam is currently used as an add-on therapy by epilepsy patients, this is the first time its effectiveness as a single therapy has been tested through a clinical trial.
The study found 73% of people taking levetiracetam and 72.8% of people receiving controlled-release carbamazepine remained seizure free for at least six months.
“Both drugs produced equivalent seizure freedom rates in newly diagnosed epilepsy. Levetiracetam helps fill a need for safe and well-tolerated, easy-to-use epilepsy drugs, particularly because more than 30% of patients do not achieve seizure control with existing treatments,” said study author Martin Brodie, with the Western Infirmary Epilepsy Unit in Scotland.
Of those remaining seizure free for six months, the study also found 80.1% of those taking levetiracetam and 85.4% of those taking carbamazepine did so at the lowest dose level.
“This trial confirms previous uncontrolled observations that most people with epilepsy will respond to their first epilepsy drug at low dosage,” said Brodie.