Correlation Between Early Response to Treatment and Long Term Prognosis in Antiepileptic Therapy

Abstract

The authors studied the relation of early response to antiepileptic therapy, which was evaluated at 2 years after the beginning of the therapy, to the long-term prognosis of seizure, in 89 cases under observation for 10 to 15 years, and found a significant correlation between the early response and prognosis. Namely, when seizure showed good response to AED in 2 years after the beginning of the therapy, it tended to lead to favorable prognosis, and vice versa. However, the correlation appeared to be influenced by some clinical factors in epilepsy: seizure type, etiology, neuro-psychiatric complications, and so on. Accordingly, we analyzed the factors and revealed that good response to early treatment and favorable prognosis were strongly linked in the cases without organic etiology and those of onset below 10 years of age. On the other hand, poor response to early treatment highly related to the unfavorable prognosis in the cases with partial seizures, those with neuro-psychiatric complications and those of onset below 10 years of age.