Loading...
In 2020, the U.S. FDA added a safety warning to the label for the widely used antiseizure medication lamotrigine (LTG), noting a potential risk for arrhythmia and slowed ventricular conduction in patients with underlying structural or functional heart disease. As this warning was based largely on preclinical studies and case reports, two groups compared the incidence of arrhythmia in adults with epilepsy initiated on lamotrigine or levetiracetam (LEV).
In the first study, in two datasets including more than 53,000 adults (U.S. Medicare claims data and the U.K. CALIBER database), patients using LTG had a similar adjusted hazard ratio for ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation (VT/VF) compared with LEV (0.73 for Medicare and 0.75 for CALIBER …