The LaLiMo Trial: lamotrigine compared with levetiracetam in the initial 26 weeks of monotherapy for focal and generalised epilepsy--an open-label, prospective, randomised controlled multicenter study.

Background: Of the newer antiepileptic drugs, lamotrigine (LTG) and levetiracetam (LEV) are popular first choice drugs for epilepsy. The authors compared these drugs with regard to their efficacy and tolerability in the initial monotherapy for epilepsy.

Methods: A randomised, open-label, controlled, parallel group, multicenter trial was conducted to test the superiority of the LEV arm over the LTG arm.

[Depression in restless legs syndrome. Pathogenesis, assessment, and implications for treatment].

Depressive disorders are a prevalent comorbidity in restless legs syndrome (RLS). Although similar prevalence rates of comorbid depression can be found in other diseases, the association between RLS and depression is particularly complex due to the RLS-related sleep disorders. It is also clinically important that according to findings derived mainly from case studies many antidepressant agents can aggravate RLS symptoms.

Variants in the neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS, NOS1) gene are associated with restless legs syndrome.

Sixty percent of the patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) report a positive family history. To date five loci have been mapped on chromosome 12q, 14q, 9p, 2q, and 20p (RLS1-5) but no gene has been identified so far. To identify genes related to RLS, we performed a three-stage association study (explorative study, replication study, high-density mapping) in two Caucasian RLS case-control samples of altogether 918 independent cases and controls.