Epilepsy Health Center

Zarontin Gets High Marks for Kids' Epilepsy

Half of Patients Failed Treatment

But it may not be the treatment many children with the disorder end up on.

Glauser points out that about half the children in the study continued to have seizures 16 to 20 weeks after starting treatment. While the treatment failure rate was highest for those taking Lamictal, it was also high in children who took the other two drugs.

"One clear message is that if a drug is not working after four or five months, it is time to move on to another drug," he says.

In an editorial accompanying the study, pediatric neurologist Eileen Vining, MD, of Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, wrote that a longer study would have more convincingly made the case that Zarontin is the best initial choice for the treatment of absence epilepsy.

While Vining praised the study's design and execution, she noted that this may not be the case for children at high risk for developing convulsive seizures, which are treated with Lamictal and Depakote but not Zarontin.

 GlaxoSmithKline, which markets Lamictal, had no comment on the study.