Epilepsy and a woman – a woman has been found!

Abstract

Currently, the number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) has been growing. While choosing the most optimal AEDs by criteria of their efficacy, tolerability and retention time on therapy, many clinical factors, individual biological characteristics of any certain patient, as well as socio-economic aspects should be taken into account, including those associated with the burden on the health care system. In practice, a doctor is primarily focused on the best clinical result while health care is obliged to take costs into account. Calculating the ratio of benefits and costs associated with pharmacotherapy is not complete without comparing the cost of original and reproduced AEDs. For many, sometimes very weighty, reasons, an idea that the original AEDs are preferable in terms of clinical expectations from their use with a significant economic disadvantage (cost) has been established. In this paradigm, reproduced AEDs are always perceived as a compromise in which an acceptable result can be obtained at moderate cost, which is true for the generalized group of reproduced AEDs. However, there are many examples when AEDs do not differ from the reference agents. In particular, Seizar from the Alkaloid company (Republic of North Macedonia) has been recently in wide use in Russia as an alternative to the original lamotrigine. On October 5–6, 2021, the II International Conference “Epilepsy and Women” was held in Belgrade, wherein the leading experts from Serbia and Russia presented reports on the effectiveness and quality of care for epilepsy at the symposiums “Childhood with Seizar”, “Preparing for adulthood with Seizar”, “Assessment of the benefits and prospects of using Seizar at all stages of women’s life with epilepsy”, “Epilepsy and comorbidity – universal opportunities”. Here, we summarize selected messages presented during the conference.