Rufinamide is a new antiepileptic drug recently approved as adjunctive treatment for generalized seizures in Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. We undertook a retrospective analysis of 77 patients with refractory epilepsy and receiving rufinamide to evaluate the drug's efficacy, tolerability, safety, and dosing schedules. It appeared efficacious in diverse epilepsy syndromes, with the highest responder rate in focal cryptogenic epilepsies (81.1% of patients with >50% response rate), and in diverse seizure types, with the highest responder rate in tonic/atonic and partial seizures (48.6% and 46.7% of patients with >50% response rate, respectively). Rufinamide was well tolerated: only 13% of patients developed side effects necessitating drug withdrawal. These findings suggest that rufinamide may possess good efficacy and tolerability, and that its efficacy may extend to epilepsy syndromes beyond Lennox-Gastaut, including both partial and generalized epilepsy syndromes.
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