Potassium bromide (KBr) can control certain types of epileptic seizures and should be considered as an option for the treatment of children with refractory epilepsy, a study says.
The findings of the study, “Potassium Bromide in the Treatment of Pediatric Refractory Epilepsy,” were published in the Journal of Child Neurology.
Dravet syndrome is a severe type of drug-resistant epilepsy that usually emerges during the first year of life and is characterized by seizures, cognitive deficits, and increased mortality.
In this study, a group of researchers from the Chiba Children’s Hospital in Japan set out to examine the efficacy and tolerability of KBr for the treatment of children with refractory epilepsy.
Treatment was found to be effective in more than half of the children diagnosed with generalized epilepsy (59.1%) and focal epilepsy (55.6%). In addition, KBr also led to significant improvements in seizure control among the two children who had been diagnosed with Dravet syndrome.
The treatment was more effective in children who had tonic seizures (72.2%), generalized tonic-clonic seizures (66.6%), or secondary generalized seizures (75.0%). KBr therapy was less effective among children who had focal seizures (46.2%), infantile spasms (20.0%), or myoclonic seizures (0%).
Adverse effects, which included drowsiness, excitement and skin rashes, were reported in 13 (31.0%) children participating in the study.