Abstracts

Rationale: Nationwide analyses of drug use can provide a prevalence estimate of the underlying disease and helps understand characteristics and costs of treatment. This study aimed for such analyses regarding antiepileptic drugs (AED) in Germany. Methods: The prescriptions for AED of all German patients with statutory health insurance (70,011,508 persons in 2009) were included from 2007 to 2009. The IMS LRx database served as data source which accesses nationwide pharmacy data centers processing prescription data of all German patients. Results: In 2009, 641,604 patients received AED for epilepsy (period prevalence: 0.92%; children and adolescents: 0.43%; elderly: 1.25%). 97.1% of the patients took one of five AED: valproate (34.8%), carbamazepine (32.9%), levetiracetam (11.9%), lamotrigine (11.2%) or oxcarbazepine (6.3%). The use of carbamazepine declined, the share of valproate remained stable and especially levetiracetam was increasingly administered from 2007 to 2009. Oxcarbazepine and sultiam were popular with paediatricians. Elderly received frequently phenytoin and primidone. More than half of the patients were treated by family physicians. 68% took AED in monotherapy and 7.9% received more than two AED (children and adolescents: 12.5%). The costs for AED prescribed for epilepsy amounted to 285.1 Mio EUR in 2009 which represented a 22.5% increase compared to 2007.Conclusions: The German 2009 prevalence of epileptic patients taking AED was 0.92%. Family physicians cared for the majority of patients. Prevalence, prescribing patterns and costs changed with age. Five AED dominated the market. Costs of AED against epilepsy added up to 1% of total medication costs in Germany.