Oxcarbazepine versus Carbamazepine for the Treatment of Post-Stroke Epilepsy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

AIM: To systematically evaluate the medication safety and effectiveness of Oxcarbazepine (OXC) and carbamazepine (CBZ) for the treatment of post-stroke epilepsy (PSE). MATERIAL and METHODS: We searched Medline and other databases to identify the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compare the efficacies of OXC and CBZ in treating PSE. Two authors extracted and analyzed the data independently with Revman 5.3 software. The Q-test and I2 were used to test the statistical heterogeneity. The fixed or random effect models were selected according to heterogeneity. RESULTS: Eight RCTs that include 671 patients were involved in this study. The meta-analyses result showed that the overall efficiency of OXC was significantly better than that of CBZ (OR=4.55, 95% confidence interval (CI) (3.04-6.81)), the overall adverse events (OR=0.27, 95% CI (0.18-0.42), and the incidence of vomiting (OR=0.28, 95% CI (0.09-0.85)) of OXC was significantly less than that of CBZ. No significant differences in the incidence of rash (OR=0.45, 95% CI (0.19-1.07)), lethargy (OR=0.49, 95% CI (0.16-1.45)), and dizziness (OR=0.51, 95% CI (0.20-1.35)) were detected between OXC and CBZ. CONCLUSION: OXC seems to be superior to CBZ in the treatment of PSE, with higher efficacy, and safety than the latter. However, more research on OXC and CBZ in the treatment of PSE is required in the later stage due to the sample size limitation of our study.