Antiepileptic drug utilization: a Danish prescription database analysis

Objectives - The purpose of the study was to use prescription data from a D anish database to analyse and evaluate antiepileptic drug (AED) utilization , and compare with other prevalence studies. Methods - A Danish research da tabase covering outpatient prescription data from a population of 471,873 p ersons was used. Prescription records on all patients prescribed AEDs durin g 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 use rs were included in our cohort. Of the subjects in the cohort 74% were on m onotherapy, 19% used two AEDs and only 7% used three or more AEDs. The eigh t most frequent regimens were all monotherapy: carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine , phenobarbital, valproic acid, lamotrigine, clonazepam, phenytoin and prim idon 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 b oth genders. Conclusions - The prescription pattern reported here is in acc ordance with the general guidelines for the treatment of epilepsy in Denmar k, except for a surprisingly extensive use of phenobarbital. With specific reservations the figures appear to be reasonable estimates of the prevalenc e of epilepsy.