Background: Sleep and epilepsy are bedfellows, and they affect each other reciprocally. Despite the well-known relationship between sleep and epilepsy, data about the impact of sleep on seizure control and responsiveness to therapy are scarce.
Objective: The aim of this work was to study the impact of sleep architecture in drug-naïve patients with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) on seizure control and responsiveness to treatment.
Methods: This is a prospective cohort study conducted on thirty newly diagnosed patients with IGE attending the epilepsy clinic in Alexandria University Hospital in Egypt and thirty healthy controls. All recruited subjects had a baseline overnight polysomnographic study, then patients were given sodium valproate in therapeutic doses and followed up for six months for assessment of seizure control. After follow-up, they were classified into fully controlled and inadequately controlled patients, and a comparison between them was made.
Results: Of the recruited patients, 13 were fully controlled. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep % was significantly lower among inadequately controlled patients (9.01 ± 6.23) than fully controlled group (19.6 ± 9.01) and controls (18.17 ± 4.85) (p = 0.002), and the REM sleep latency was significantly longer among the inadequately controlled patients (115.7 ± 72.8 min) than fully controlled patients (54.6 ± 77.3 min) and controls (68.75 ± 37.95 min) (p = 011). On univariate regression analysis, the Odd's ratio (OR) for REM sleep percentage was 3.04 (p = 0.001).
Conclusion: Rapid eye movement sleep percentage and latency can contribute to seizure control in IGE.
Keywords: Epilepsy; Idiopathic generalized epilepsy; REM latency; REM sleep; Seizure control; Sleep.
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