Effect of sabeluzole (R 58,735) on memory functions in patients with epilepsy

Sabeluzole, a new benzothiazol derivative, has shown positive effects on memory function in animals and in normal volunteers. The present study reports the results of sabeluzole, in memory-impaired patients with localization-related (partial) epilepsy. A randomized, double-blind placebo-controlled parallel-group design was used. A total of 38 patients entered a prospective baseline. Five patients dropped out from the study, thus 33 patients were randomly assigned to either a 12-weeks treatment with sabeluzole (n = 14) or placebo (n = 19). The treatment phase was preceded by a titration phase of 4 weeks to obtain serum levels of sabeluzole between 50 and 130 ng/ml. In order to maintain blindness, a sham titration was carried out in the placebo group. The number of 'responders', i.e. patients with a > 1 SD improvement on at least three of the memory tests was 9 out of 14 (64.3%) in the sabeluzole group and 7 out of 19 (36.8%) in the placebo group. This suggests a clinically relevant effect of sabeluzole. The analysis of the memory tests showed a statistically significant improvement with sabeluzole on the verbal long-term memory test. This could represent a specific drug effect and is in line with previous results of normal volunteer studies that also found improvement mainly restricted to the area of verbal long-term memory.