Abstracts

Rationale: Benzodiazepines (BDZ) may be used as co-adjuvant drug therapy for seizure control. However, how this drug category affects the anxiety levels of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy remains unknown. Studies addressing the possible uses of BDZ as treatment for anxiety disorders are still warranted, given that these are common neuropsychiatric co-morbidities in temporal lobe epilepsy. In this study Evaluate whether the chronic use of BDZ as a co-adjuvant drug for seizure control affected the anxiety levels of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.Methods: Case-control study with 97 patients, 35 (36%) men and 62 (64%) women with temporal lobe epilepsy. Demographic, electrophysiological and neuroimaging variables were matched between cases and controls. Anxiety levels were evaluated by BAI (Becker Anxiety Inventory) and Hamilton Anxiety Scale. Results: In our study, mean age, age of seizure onset and time of epilepsy were 45.2, 19.4 and 25.1 years, respectively. After performing logistic regression on the data, female sex (O.R.=2.71; I.C. 95%=1.09-6.71; p=0.029) and resistance to pharmacological treatment (O.R.= 3.04; I.C. 95%=1.30-7.11; p=0.09) remained isolate risk factors for symptoms of high anxiety levels in temporal lobe epilepsy. However, the use of benzodiazepines as a co-adjuvant drug for epilepsy treatment was not protective for anxiety symptoms in these patients (O.R.=1.37; IC95%=0.45-4.14; p=0.58). Conclusions: We failed to observe lower anxiety levels in patients using benzodiazepines chronically as an adjuvant treatment for seizures when compared to epileptic controls. One possible explanation for our finding is that the chronic use of BDZ might render patients tolerant for BDZ anxiolytic proprieties. Contra-intuitively, our results suggest that the chronic use of BDZ might not be a good alternative for treating anxiety disorders in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. We acknowledge CNPq and HCPA-FIPE for funding this study.