A study that came out in the journal Neurology on Monday suggests that only a few epilepsy drugs are connected to rise in suicidal tendency, even though all the medications display a warning about the hazard.
The study involved 44,300 UK patients using epilepsy medications from 1990 to 2005. But an increase in suicidal tendency was noticed only in a few patients who use a few newer drugs that were previously associated with risk of depression. Some of the newer drugs are topiramate (Topamax), levetiracetam (Keppra), tiagabine (Gabitril) and vigabatrin (Sabril).
In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration had ordered that all the epilepsy drugs should display a warning about the risk of suicidal behavior on using those drugs. The latest report offers support to the move by FDA but also shows that only a few newer medications require the warning to be displayed.
The electronic medical records in UK showed only 453 cases of suicide or suicide attempts from a list of 44,300 patients. The researchers then classified the epilepsy drugs in different categories so as to study the risk of self-harm and suicidal behavior from a new point of view.
More than 1% of epilepsy patients using the newer drugs like tiagabine, vigabatrin, topiramate and levetiracetam developed depression. All these were included in one group as the drugs with high depression risk.
Other newer medications like oxcarbazepine (Trileptal), lamotrigine (Lamictal), pregabalin (lyrica) and gabapentin (Neurontin) were included in a group of drugs with low risk of depression.
Two more groups included barbiturates and some epilepsy drugs in market since long like valproate (Epilim, Depakine) and carbamazepine (Tegretol, Carbatrol).
After grouping this way, the study revealed that a 3 times high suicidal tendency was found in the patients using the first group of drugs compared to those patients who are not using any epilepsy drug since an year. However, the number of cases was not enough to reach a conclusion as only two cases were found among those using levetiracetam, vigabatrin and topiramate and not a single case among those using tiagabine.
Moreover, Epilepsy itself is associated to more than average depression risk and suicidal behavior making it harder to extricate the negative effects of epilepsy drugs.
Source:
Fox News
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by on 28. Jul, 2010 in Health News
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