Ineffectiveness of folic acid supplementation against phenytoin-induced decrease in salivary immunoglobulin A concentration of epileptic patients.

AIMS

This study was designed to investigate if folate treatment is able to reverse the phenytoin-induced deficiency of salivary immunoglobulin A (IgA).

METHODS AND MATERIAL

Twenty-five epileptic patients who had been under phenytoin therapy for at least the last 6 months were randomly selected and subjected to folic acid supplementation, 1 mg/day. The salivary IgA concentration of these patients was measured before and after 2 months of folic acid administration and compared with those of 10 healthy individuals. Independent and paired Student's t tests were used to analyze the effects of phenytoin and folic acid, respectively.

RESULTS

Salivary IgA levels of patients receiving phenytoin (11.7 +/- 4.8 IU/l) were significantly (p = 0.039) lower than those of healthy controls (14.8 +/- 3.2 IU/l), but did not statistically (p = 0.541) differ from levels (11.8 +/- 4.6 IU/l) measured after 2 months of folic acid supplementation.

CONCLUSIONS

According to these results, folic acid supplementation does not seem to have the efficacy to ameliorate phenytoin-induced salivary IgA hyposecretion.

(c) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel