Revised guideline for prescribing vigabatrin in children

Editor—The Vigabatrin Paediatric Advisory Group, which in 1998 produced a guideline to “help clinicians when prescribing vigabatrin in children,” has now revised it.¹,² We, the steering committee of the United Kingdom infantile spasm study (UKISS), responded to the original guideline.³ Our opinion was that there is no evidence that vigabatrin is a better treatment of infantile spasms than hormonal treatments, such as prednisolone and synthetic adrenocorticotrophic hormone preparations.

When we challenged the claim that vigabatrin is the drug of choice, the advisory group offered no rebuttal. Now the claim is stated again, without any appropriate new evidence being produced. Indeed, the finding that visual field losses attributable to vigabatrin occur in children as well as adults strengthens any challenge to the guideline's claim.

We stand by our argument that no one has yet determined the best first line treatment for infantile spasms. To back our challenge we cited the one randomised trial that has compared vigabatrin and adrenocorticotrophic hormone; confidence intervals for this suggest that vigabatrin is unlikely to have a superior treatment effect.⁴ Also, we pointed to a lack of studies using neurodevelopmental outcome measures and to new and emerging information about the safety of vigabatrin.

Our desire to gather reliable data is shared by many paediatricians and paediatric neurologists: consultants in over 140 health districts are helping our study to collect evidence about these treatments. Before clinicians can decide if any of the first line treatments for infantile spasms might reasonably be described as the drug of choice they will need to examine (when they become available) the results of studies such as the United Kingdom infantile spasm study.