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Antiepileptic drug utilization: a Danish prescription database analysis
Author(s) -
Rochat P.,
Hallas J.,
Gaist D.,
Friis M. L.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
acta neurologica scandinavica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.967
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1600-0404
pISSN - 0001-6314
DOI - 10.1034/j.1600-0404.2001.00197.x
Subject(s) - medicine , medical prescription , carbamazepine , lamotrigine , oxcarbazepine , cohort , clonazepam , pharmacoepidemiology , pediatrics , epilepsy , danish , cohort study , population , pharmacology , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy , environmental health
Objectives – The purpose of the study was to use prescription data from a Danish database to analyse and evaluate antiepileptic drug (AED) utilization, and compare with other prevalence studies. Methods – A Danish research database covering outpatient prescription data from a population of 471,873 persons was used. Prescription records on all patients prescribed AEDs during 1998 were retrieved. A cohort was extracted from the group of AED users. Results – We identified 5426 AED users. A total of 3756 of the 5426 AED users were included in our cohort. Of the subjects in the cohort 74% were on monotherapy, 19% used two AEDs and only 7% used three or more AEDs. The eight most frequent regimens were all monotherapy: carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, phenobarbital, valproic acid, lamotrigine, clonazepam, phenytoin and primidon in that order. The estimated crude 1‐year prevalence of AED use was 0.77% for women and 0.83% for men ( P <0.001), and it increased with age for both genders. Conclusions – The prescription pattern reported here is in accordance with the general guidelines for the treatment of epilepsy in Denmark, except for a surprisingly extensive use of phenobarbital. With specific reservations the figures appear to be reasonable estimates of the prevalence of epilepsy.