Lamotrigine and catamenial epilepsy

Ronit Gilad*, Menachem Sadeh, Abraham Rapoport, Ron Dabby, Yair Lampl

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Catamenial epilepsy (CE) is characterized by epileptic seizures in the female occurring rhythmatically with the menstrual cycle. Hormonal mechanisms have been proposed as a cause of this epileptic form. Few reports about the efficacy of anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) have been published. We studied prospectively women with CE who were treated with lamotrigine (LTG) for a period of 3 months in order to evaluate its efficacy, measuring the progesterone levels before and after LTG at the same time. LTG seemed to be efficacious in 66% of women, meaning the disappearance of seizures or reduction of 50% or more of the number of seizures. The reported side effects were few and mild, and the drug was well tolerated. Serum progesterone levels were found to rise during LTG treatment.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)531-534
Number of pages4
JournalSeizure
Volume17
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2008

Keywords

  • Catamenial
  • Epilepsy
  • Lamotrigine
  • Menstruation

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