Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma is a pediatric oncologic disease with dismal 
prognosis and no effective treatment. Since 2007, our patients have been using 
valproic acid as prophylactic anticonvulsant. We have undertaken a retrospective 
study in order to evaluate the influence of valproate in the outcomes of 
children with this disease in our center. Patients were treated with weekly 
carboplatin and vincristine and received conformal radiotherapy, either 
concurrent or sequential. Event-free survival and overall survival of patients 
not treated with valproic acid were 6.5 and 7.8 months. Accelerated failure time 
model (a parametric multivariate regression test for time-to-failure data) 
showed a statistically significant superiority of the median event-free survival 
of treated patients (6.5 vs. 9.5 months in treated patients; HR 0.54-95 % CI 
0.33-0.87; p < 0.05) and also of overall survival (7.8 vs. 13.4 months in 
treated patients; HR 0.60-95 % CI 0.37-0.98; p = 0.05).