Peter Martin and Jörg Fahrbach

Séguin Clinic for Persons with Severe Intellectual Disability, Epilepsy Centre Kork, Landstr 1, D-77694 Kehl-Kork, Germany

Aim: Few studies have concerned anticonvulsive combination therapies in epilepsies resistant to established antiepileptic drugs in monotherapy. We sought to delineate the effects of zonisamide – levetiracetam comedication (ZNS+LEV) in adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

Material and Methods: Nine adult patients with drug resistant epilepsies and ID were treated in a routine outpatient setting with LEV or ZNS in combination with other anticonvulsants first and in a combination of both of them (ZNS+LEV) thereafter. Seizure frequency and behavioural effects were recorded in patients treated who approved to benefit from the combination of both substances but not when treated with only either of them.

Results: The longitudinal follow up of individual cases of patients with difficult to treat epilepsies and intellectual disabilitiy (ID) suggests that the combination of ZNS and LEV may be an effective and well tolerated option, even if LEV or ZNS alone or in either other combinations had failed to reduce seizure frequency.

Conclusions: These findings may not be generalized but request to perform further controlled studies on the efficacy and tolerability of the anticonvulsive therapy of ZNS in combination with LEV.

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Citation: Martin P, Fahrbach J. Efficacy of Zonisamide – Levetiracetam Comedication in Nine Adult Patients with Difficult to Treat Epilepsy and Intellectual Disability (A Case Series Report). Maced J Med Sci. 2012 Mar 15; 5(1):78-89. http://dx.doi.org/10.3889/MJMS.1957-5773.2011.0211.
Key words: Anticonvulsants; Combination; Zonisamide and Levetiracetam; Drug resistant epilepsy; Intellectual disability; Case studies.
Correspondence: Peter Martin. Séguin Clinic for Persons with Severe Intellectual Disability, Landstr. 1, D-77694 Kehl-Kork, Germany. Phone: 0049 7851 84 2252. Fax: 0049 7851 84 2602. E-mail: pmartin@epilepsiezentrum.de
Received: 31-Oct-2011; Revised: 24-Nov-2011; Accepted: 25-Nov-2011; Online first: 05-Dec-2011
Copyright: © 2011 Martin P. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

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