Community Corner: New Drug Alerts

Tridione® (Trimethadione)

Dulcet 150 mg tablets of Trimethadione are no longer being made or distributed. Tridione is a very old drug and is rarely used now. It was taken off the market in 1995 but a small number of people may still be taking it through a compassionate use program by AbbVie. A limited supply of the medicine may be available through AbbVie’s Compassionate Use Program until July 2018.

We encourage anyone still taking Tridione to talk to their prescribing provider for their epilepsy treatment. Many seizure medicines and other therapies are available since this drug was taken off the market. If you have questions or concerns about the AbbVie Program for Tridione, please contact their office at 800-441-4987.

Fycompa® (Perampanel)

On July 26th, 2017, the FDA approved an important change to perampanel prescribing information. Perampanel is now approved as monotherapy (used alone) in people with focal or partial-onset seizures both with and without secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizures. For people with generalized onset tonic-clonic seizures, it is still approved as an add-on treatment (given together with other seizure medications).

• When used alone, perampanel should be started at 2 mg each day, given at bedtime. It is gradually increased, no faster than every 2 to 3 mg a week.
• The likely effective dose range lies between 8-12 mg/day. As with most antiepileptic drugs, this medicine’s final dose should be adjusted to how each person responds.

This new indication is noteworthy in that perampanel is the first seizure medicine to be granted an approval by the FDA that states that “it is acceptable to extrapolate the efficacy and safety of drugs approved as adjunctive therapy for the treatment of partial onset seizures (POS) to their use as monotherapy for the treatment of POS.” In addition to data from the three initial adjunctive clinical trials, as of July 2017, perampanel has been prescribed to over 100,000 patients worldwide across all of its epilepsy indications.

For more information

• Talk to your health care provider about Fycompa and all options for treating seizures.
• Visit our seizure medicine list.
• Visit Eisai Inc. the manufacturer of Fycompa. Read the Eisai Inc. press release.

Patty Osborne Shafer RN, MN
Associate Editor, epilepsy.com