[Valproic acid monotherapy in epilepsies in childhood and adolescence]

The effectiveness and side effects of a DPA monotherapy were evaluated in 96 children and adolescents over a period of five years. In addition the attempt has been made to find correlations between sex, age of seizure onset, etiology of the disease, types of seizures, and EEG abnormalities on the one hand, and the clinical response to the drug on the other hand. The results are in many respects similar to other observations with DPA: good therapeutic effect in cases with seizure onset between the age of 7-10 years, cryptogenic or genetic etiology, primary generalized seizures, and a generalized pattern in EEG (without focal changes). On the contrary positive effect of DPA in partial epilepsies and secondarily generalized epilepsies was seen only in those patients who had a seizure onset between seven and ten years and a cryptogenic etiology (syndrome of benign rolandic epilepsy in childhood can be suspected in these cases).