safety and efficacy of memantine in improving cognitive function of patients with epilepsy

Background: the prevalence of cognitive impairment among patients with epilepsy is about 70%.there is still no approved medication for the treatment of this problem.objectives: the present study aims to assess the safety and efficacy of memantine in improving thecognitive function of patients with epilepsy.materials & methods: this is a pilot, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallelgroupclinical trial, conducted in a hospital in tehran, iran during 2018-2019. participants wererandomly allocated to receive memantine (5 mg/day in the first eight weeks and 10 mg/day inthe second eight weeks) or placebo in a 1:1 ratio. participants underwent the mini-mental stateexamination (mmse), montreal cognitive assessment (moca), and frontal assessment battery(fab) before and after the intervention. the primary and secondary measures were safety andchange in the cognitive test scores, respectively.results: out of 53 allocated participants, 33 completed the study. drug intolerance includingheadache, somnolence, and dizziness was not significantly different between the two groups. theintention-to-treat analyses demonstrated no significant change in moca and fab scores betweenthe two groups after the intervention, but a significant improvement in the mmse score of thememantine group (p=0.047) was observed. after controlling confounding factors, there was nosignificant difference in scores of any cognitive tests between the two groups.conclusion: memantine is a safe drug for patients with epilepsy, but it may not exert a beneficialeffect on the cognitive function of these patients.