Abstracts

RATIONALE: We sought to determine historical factors associated with epilepsy severity and reproductive characteristics in menopausal women with epilepsy.
METHODS: We surveyed menopausal women with epilepsy from four urban academic medical centers by interviewing the subjects and reviewing the charts. Subjects were categorized into one of three broad epilepsy severity groups. Epilepsy severity groups were determined by estimation of seizure frequency over the entire duration of epilepsy as follow: Group 1 [lt]20 lifetime seizures, Group 2 [gt]20 lifetime seizures but [lt]1 seizure/month, Group 3 [gt]1 seizure/month. Women with both natural and surgical menopause were included. Statistical methods used were one-way ANOVA, Pearson bivariate correlation, and cross-tabulation with chi-square.
RESULTS: Sixty-nine menopausal women with epilepsy were included. Subjects by epilepsy group were Group 1 n=15, Group 2 n=25, Group 3 n=28. The average number of children borne was not significantly different between epilepsy severity groups. Total number of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) ever used (each AED taken for greater than 1 year) and total number of enzyme-inducing AEDs ever taken correlated with epilepsy severity by group (p[lt]0.001 for total AEDs and p=0.002 for EIAEDs).
CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that of this population of women treated in urban academic epilepsy centers, those with more severe epilepsy are receiving more AED treatment trials, which is an indirect measure of the patients[scquote] both seeking and obtaining adequate epilepsy care. However, the number of children borne does not seem to be influenced by, or to have any influence on epilepsy severity.
[Supported by: NIH [ndash] National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, R01 NS38473]