Basu 2005

Methods	Randomised, open‐label, parallel group design. Follow‐up 12 months.
Participants	30 patients with typical absence seizures (males 16; females 14. Age between 5 and 14 years) 15 patients allocated to VPA and 15 to LTG.
Interventions	No detailed information on drug dosages. The doses of both the drugs were escalated according to the clinical response, starting from a low dose. Lamotrigine was titrated very slowly at 2‐weekly intervals to avoid unwanted side effects (maximum 10 mg/kg/day).
Outcomes	Seizure freedom.
Notes	Results of this study were published as abstract.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Blinding (performance bias and detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Unclear risk	Insufficient information to permit judgement.