Single centre 20 year survey of antiepileptic drug-induced hypersensitivity reactions

Background: epilepsy is a chronic neurological disease which affects about 1% of the human population. there are 50 million patients in the world suffering from this disease and 2 million new cases per year are observed. the necessary treatment with antiepileptic drugs (aeds) increases the risk of adverse reactions. in case of 15% of people receiving aeds,cutaneous reactions,like maculopapular or erythematous pruritic rash,may appear within four weeks of initiating therapy with aeds. methods: this study involved 300 epileptic patients in the period between september 1989 and september 2009. a cutaneous adverse reaction was defined as a diffuse rash,which had no other obvious reason than a drug effect,and resulted in contacting a physician. results: among 300 epileptic patients of neurological practice in kielce (132 males and 168 females),a skin reaction to at least one aed was found in 30 patients. as much as 95% of the reactions occurred during therapies with carbamazepine,phenytoin,lamotrigine or oxcarbazepine. one of the patients developed stevens-johnson syndrome. conclusion: some hypersensitivity problems of epileptic patients were obviously related to antiepileptic treatment. among aeds,gabapentin,topiramate,levetiracetam,vigabatrin,and phenobarbital were not associated with skin lesions,although the number of patients in the case of the latter was small. copyright © 2013 by institute of pharmacology.