Comparison of antiepileptic efficacy between Melatonin and placebo adding on routine drug regimen in generalized epilepsy

Background: Effective treatment of epilepsy is taken into account a major challenge in the field of neurology.This study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of melatonin in decreasing severity and frequency of seizure and also the quality of sleep. Methods: In this cross over clinical trial study 30 patients with idiopathic generalized tonic-clonic epilepsy and under routine antiepileptic treatment received intermittently either melatonin or placebo with a washout period of one week. Outcome variables included reduction in severity and frequency of seizures besides improvement in EEG abnormalities and sleep quality. Findings: By adding melatonin,decrease in mean severity score of epilepsy (according to Chalfont questionnaire) was 31.8±22.8, while it was 14.3±17.8 in treatment with placebo (p-value=0.002). Evaluation of the number of attacks and EEG results did not disclose any therapeutic efficacy in treatment with melatonin versus placebo.The quality of sleep improved in 43.3% and 16.7% of subjects who received melatonin and placebo, respectively (p-value=0.036). Conclusion:Considering addition of melatonin to routine antiepileptic treatment was effective in reducing the severity of epilepsy and improving sleep quality; it seems that melatonin can be used as an adjunct therapy for idiopathic generalized tonic-clonic epilepsy in well-defined circumstances.

کلیدواژه ها:

Grandmal epilepsy ، Melatonin ، anti-epileptic treatment