Abstracts

Rationale: Epilepsy patients have high prevalence of various sleep disturbance compared to general population. The aim of this study was to investigate sleep quality in epilepsy patients according to the seizure control. Methods: We enrolled the consecutive 111 epilepsy patients (M: F 84: 27, age 20-65 y) from January 2009 to May 2013. All completed overnight polysomnography(PSG), sleep-habit questionnaire, Epworth Sleepiness Scale, and Beck Depression Inventory. Patients were divided into well-controlled group (WC, n=62, no seizures ≥ recent 6 m) and uncontrolled group (UC, n=49, seizure persisting ≥ 1/m). Data was compared between patients and controls and patients with WC and UC. Results: Patients had poorer sleep quality (lower sleep efficiency, higher apnea-hypopnea index & arousal indices) than controls. UC had a longer duration of epilepsy (mean 14.4±10.6 y vs. 6.6±9.5, p<0.01) and a higher number of antiepileptic drug (2.5±1.1 vs. 1.1±0.7, p<0.01) than WC. No significant difference was observed in frequency of nocturnal seizure between UC and WC. UC reported significantly longer sleep time during weekday (454.2±100.5 vs. 392.8±70.7min, p<0.01) and weekend (479.2±90.4 vs. 428.3±97.3 min, p=0.01) than WC, however, other sleep habits were not different. Objective sleep time in PSG was longer in UC than WC (382.0±71.8 vs. 366.2±61.6 min, p=0.04), while sleep efficiency and arousal indices were not significantly different between them. In patients with uncontrolled seizures, BDI seems to be higher than patients with controlled seizures (13.0 vs. 9.8, p=0.08), but not significant. Conclusions: These findings showed that epilepsy patients had deteriorated sleep compared to controls, however, sleep quality was not remarkably influenced by seizure control. It remains whether sedative antiepileptic drugs may affect sleep quality in UC patients as a future study.