TY - JOUR AU - Charalambous, Marios AU - Shivapour, Sara K. AU - Brodbelt, David C. AU - Volk, Holger A. PY - 2016 DA - 2016/05/21 TI - Antiepileptic drugs’ tolerability and safety – a systematic review and meta-analysis of adverse effects in dogs JO - BMC Veterinary Research SP - 79 VL - 12 IS - 1 AB - The safety profile of anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) is an important consideration for the regulatory bodies, owners and prescribing clinicians. Information on their adverse effects still remains limited. A systematic review including a meta-analytic approach was designed to evaluate existing evidence for the safety profile of AEDs in canine patients. Electronic searches of PubMed, CAB Direct and Google scholar were carried out without date or language restrictions. Conference proceedings were also searched. Peer-reviewed full-length studies reporting adverse effects of AEDs in epileptic and healthy non-epileptic dogs were included. Studies were allocated to three groups based on their design. Individual studies were evaluated based on the quality of evidence (study design, study group sizes, subject enrolment quality and overall risk of bias) and the outcome measures reported (proportion of specific adverse effects for each AED, prevalence and 95 % confidence interval of the affected population in each study and comparative odds ratio of adverse effects for AEDs). SN - 1746-6148 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-016-0703-y DO - 10.1186/s12917-016-0703-y ID - Charalambous2016 ER -