Zonisamide was first used in Japan in 1972 to treat psychiatric diseases, and it has been widely used to treat epilepsy in Japan and Korea since at least 1990. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use in the United States in March 2000, suggesting that it be used along with other seizure medicines (as adjunctive or add-on therapy) in the treatment of partial seizures in adults.
Zonisamide (zoh-NIH-sah-mide) is the generic name (non-brand name) used in the United States for a widely used seizure medicine. The common brand name for Zonisamide is Zonegran (ZAHN-uh-gran).
It is used to treat:
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Focal Impaired Awareness or Complex Partial Seizures
Refractory Seizures
Secondarily Generalized Seizures or Bilateral Tonic Clonic Seizure
Focal Aware or Simple Partial Seizure