Initial polytherapy effectively improves prognosis of infantile spasms

Adrenocorticotropic hormone is recommended worldwide as an initial therapy for infantile spasms. However, infantile spasms in about 50% of children cannot be fully controlled by adrenocorticotropic hormone monotherapy, seizures recur in 33% of patients who initially respond to adrenocorticotropic hormone monotherapy, and side effects are relatively common during adrenocorticotropic hormone treatment.

Feiyong Jia and colleagues from the First Hospital of Jilin University used combined therapy with adrenocorticotropic hormone, topiramate, vitamin B6, and immunoglobulin in 51 cases of infantile spasms, and they found that the initial polytherapy with adrenocorticotropic hormone, topiramate, vitamin B6, and immunoglobulin effectively improves the prognosis of infantile spasms, and its effects were superior in cryptogenic children to symptomatic children.

These findings were published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 17, 2013).