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Updated: May 28, 2026

Electromagnetic Source Imaging in Presurgical Evaluation of Children with Drug-Resistant Epilepsy
Published on: September 20, 2024
Self-reported symptoms in patients on antiepileptic drugs in monotherapy
U C Wieshmann1, G M Tan, G Baker
1The Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, University of Liverpool, UK. udo.wieshmann@thewaltoncentre.nhs.uk
Objective:
To ascertain the frequency of self-reported symptoms in patients taking antiepileptic drugs (AED).
Methods:
We included patients on carbamazepine (CBZ) n = 36, valproate (VPA) n = 21, levetiracetam (LEV) n = 12, phenytoin (PHT) n = 11, lamotrigine (LTG) n = 20, patients not taking anticonvulsive drugs n = 19, and healthy control subjects (CTRL) n = 41 to complete the Liverpool Adverse Event Profile (LAEP).
Results:
The mean LAEP scores were CBZ/PHT/LEV/VPA/LTG/noAED/CTRL = 44.97/42.00/41.00/40.33/32.42/42.00/30.80. LEV scored overall in the same range as the older AED but had a different adverse effect profile with self-reported anger (33%) and shaky hands (42%) particularly frequent. Patients with depression or uncontrolled epilepsy had significantly higher LAEP scores than patients without depression or uncontrolled epilepsy.
Conclusion:
Our unblinded observational study of self-reported symptoms suggested LTG was overall the drug with the least self-reported symptoms. Larger studies are needed to determine whether this was a truly significant difference. LEV had a different side effect profile to older AED. Confounding factors were depression and uncontrolled epilepsy. This observation should be further tested with randomized studies.
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