Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis: Retigabine for Adjunctive Therapy in Partial Epilepsy – updated review for Canada

Trial description: There are a number of anti-epileptic drugs available for the treatment of partial onset seizures in patients with epilepsy. This study is a systematic review of the published literature on anti-epileptic drugs and is designed to compare the relative effectiveness and tolerability of lacosamide with retigabine. Lacosamide and retigabine belong to a newer generation of drugs for epilepsy. Published data with these treatments were collected in studies with similar patient populations and methods. In 2010, GSK commissioned YHEC (York Health Economic Consortium) to carry out a systematic review and meta-analysis. YHEC identified relevant studies from international databases. These studies had compared retigabine, lacosamide, pregabalin, tiagabine and zonisamide with placebo. The results were pooled and combined in order to summarise the data for individual drugs as well to compare the results for different drugs with each other and with retigabine. Since none of the individual clinical studies compared one active drug with another, the systematic review was an indirect comparison of these drugs, using an established and recognised methodology which has well understood limitations. GSK Canada has now commissioned a selective update of that systematic review, limited to retigabine and lacosamide only. It will be updated to identify studies of those interventions published since the former review was completed.