A MEDICINE used to combat convulsions and seizures has been approved for use by Scottish children.
The drug, zonisamide, marketed under the trade name Zonegran, was already available on prescription in Scotland for adults at risk of seizures from epilepsy or other conditions.
However, the decision by the Scottish Medicines Consortium gives the green light for the treatment to be offered to children aged six and over. It comes after the European Commission agreed to a similar step.
Professor Martin Brodie, director of the epilepsy unit at the Western Infirmary in Glasgow, said: "Uncontrolled epilepsy can affect all aspects of children and their family's lives and so new, effective and well-tolerated medications are always needed." Prof Brodie said he had first-hand experience of the drug's effectiveness in reducing seizures - the most common type of epilepsy - in adults, and added: "I look forward to seeing this opportunity extended to children and adolescents."
The so-called gold standard of scientific trials -double blind randomised testing - showed 50% of young patients benefited from zonisamide, compared with 31% who did better on a placebo. The drug was approved for use in adults in the EU in 2005.
The study last year found so-called adverse events related to the drug's use were minimal and those taking zonisamide had no more such events than patients offered a placebo.
Epilepsy affects around 54,000 people in Scotland and around 63,400 people aged 18 years and under in the UK.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article