Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Dec 18:2013:0317.

Absence seizures in children

Ewa Posner  1
Affiliations

Absence seizures in children

Ewa Posner. BMJ Clin Evid. .

Abstract

Introduction: About 10% of seizures in children with epilepsy are typical absence seizures. Absence seizures have a significant impact on quality of life.

Methods and outcomes: We conducted a systematic review and aimed to answer the following clinical question: What are the effects of treatments for typical absence seizures in children? We searched: Medline, Embase, The Cochrane Library, and other important databases up to July 2013 (Clinical Evidence reviews are updated periodically; please check our website for the most up to date version of this review). We included harms alerts from relevant organisations such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Results: We found 18 RCTs or systematic reviews of RCTs that met our inclusion criteria. We performed a GRADE evaluation of the quality of evidence for interventions.

Conclusions: In this systematic review we present information relating to the effectiveness and safety of the following interventions: clonazepam, ethosuximide, gabapentin, lamotrigine, and valproate.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Panayiotopoulos CP. Treatment of typical absence seizures and related epileptic syndromes. Paediatr Drugs 2001;3:379–403. - PubMed
    1. Jallon P and Latour P. Epidemiology of idiopathic generalized epilepsies. Epilepsia 2005;46(suppl 9):10–14. - PubMed
    1. Genton P. When antiepileptic drugs aggravate epilepsy. Brain Dev 2000;22:75–80. - PubMed
    1. Hom CS, Ater SB, Hurst DL. Carbamazepine-exacerbated epilepsy in children and adolescents. Pediatr Neurol 1986;2:340–345. - PubMed
    1. Parker AP, Agathonikou A, Robinson RO, et al. Inappropriate use of carbamazepine and vigabatrin in typical absence seizures. Dev Med Child Neurol 1998;40:517–519. - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources