Serum leptin levels in children receiving long-term carbamazepine.

In this article we studied serum leptin levels in children receiving long-term carbamazepine (CBZ) therapy (mean 3.4 years) to determine whether or not there was a relationship between serum leptin level and CBZ therapy. The study includes 14 patients followed with the diagnosis of epilepsy and treated long term CBZ, and 19 healthy children. Only two (14%) patients complained about overeating and weight gain. We did not find any significant difference for age, sex, body mass index and serum leptin levels between the study and control groups (p > 0.05). If a markedly weight gain was seen in the study group, a higher levels of serum leptin could be expected. Additionally, there was not a relationship between serum leptin and CBZ levels (r: 0.48; p > 0.05). Our preliminary findings showed that long-term use of CBZ did not cause markedly weight gain in childhood and serum leptin levels did not differ from the control subjects. We think that more extensive studies should be performed about this subject.