Future Studies on Cenobamate for Epilepsy: William Rosenfeld, MD
The neurologist from the Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center for Children and Adults, in St. Louis, Missouri, also discussed future studies planned for cenobamate.
“What I found very interesting was that the numbers were even better than expected; the fact that we saw such high numbers for the seizure freedom. The double blind was where there was 20% [seizure freedom], but we're seeing numbers that are better [in the open-label], numbers from 25 to 33%, seizure freedom numbers.”
William Rosenfeld, MD, neurologist, Comprehensive Epilepsy Care Center and colleagues presented data from a post-hoc analysis of a phase 3 study at the American Epilepsy Society (AES) Annual Meeting, December 4–8, 2020 that suggested that reducing doses of concomitant anti-seizure medications (ASMs) led to fewer patients with focal seizures discontinuing cenobamate (Xcopri; SK Life Science). Cenobamate was approved for the treatment of partial-onset seizures in late 2019.
Rosenfeld and colleagues found that among patients who remained on cenobamate, 91 of the 401 (22.7%) concomitant baseline ASM doses were discontinued completely. Most patients had significant reductions in seizure frequency across focal seizure types. When comparing total baseline seizure frequency to last 3-month visit, 85% of patients had ≥50% reduction, 74% had ≥75% reduction, and 57.2% had 100% reduction in seizures.
NeurologyLive spoke with Rosenfeld to learn more about the efficacy of cenobamate in achieving seizure freedom. He also discussed future plans to investigate cenobamate in pediatric studies, for primary generalized tonic clonic seizures, and eventually as a monotherapy.
For more coverage of AES 2020, click here.
