Caffeine and Its Interactions with Antiseizure Medications—Is There a Correlation between Preclinical and Clinical Data?

Abstract

Experimental studies reveal that caffeine (trimethylxanthine) at subconvulsive doses, distinctly reduced the anticonvulsant activity of numerous antiseizure medications (ASMs) in rodents, oxcarbazepine, tiagabine and lamotrigine being the exceptions. Clinical data based on low numbers of patients support the experimental results by showing that caffeine (ingested in high quantities) may sharply increase seizure frequency, considerably reducing the quality of patients’ lives. In contrast, this obviously negative activity of caffeine was not found in clinical studies involving much higher numbers of patients. ASMs vulnerable to caffeine in experimental models of seizures encompass carbamazepine, phenobarbital, phenytoin, valproate, gabapentin, levetiracetam, pregabalin and topiramate. An inhibition of R-calcium channels by lamotrigine and oxcarbazepine may account for their resistance to the trimethylxanthine. This assumption, however, is complicated by the fact that topiramate also seems to be a blocker of R-calcium channels. A question arises why large clinical studies failed to confirm the results of experimental and case-report studies. A possibility exists that the proportion of patients taking ASMs resistant to caffeine may be significant and such patients may be sufficiently protected against the negative activity of caffeine.