Abstracts

In a tertiary care center, we performed video-EEG monitoring on 32 autistic children, and found that 19 had interictal epileptiform abnormalities (IEAs). All recorded seizures in this group were non-epileptic. Therefore, we question whether the IEAs in these children represent an intrinsic part of the autistic phenotype Video-EEG monitoring studies of autistic children (n=32) were compared with those of non-autistic children with other cerebral disorders (n=20). This comparison group included children with developmental delay, learning disability, and attention deficit disorder, who like to autistic group, underwent continuous EEG or video-EEG monitoring to exclude epileptic seizures. None of the patients from either group proved to have epilepsy. Specific parameters that were examined included the occurrence of IEAs and the types, i.e., focal, multifocal, and generalized IEAs. The autistic group consisted of 27 boys and 5 girls with a median age of 5 years (2-13 years). The comparison group consisted of 12 boys and 7 girls with a median age of 7.5 years (1-18 years). Nineteen of the 32 (59%) autistic children and 12 of the 20 (60%) children in the comparison group had IEAs, respectively. Of these children with IEAs, 11 of 19 (58%) in the autistic group and only 3 of 12 (25%) in the comparison group had generalized IEAs. Multifocal IEAs also tended to occur more often in the autistic group than in the comparison group (32% vs. 8%). In contrast, focal IEAs tended to predominate in the comparison group (75%) compared to the autistic group (42%), although a minority of patients in each group had co-existence of focal/multifocal and generalized IEAs. IEAs may occur in non-epileptic children with a variety of cerebral disorders. However, the abnormalities in children with autism tend to differ from those of a similar cohort without autism. Specifically, generalized IEAs may constitute an intrinsic part of the autistic phenotype.