Authors :
Presenting Author: Seok-Yeol Yang, MD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Yi-Seul Choo, MD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Hea Ree Park, MD, PhD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Eun Yeon Joo, MD, PhD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Young-Min Shon, MD, PhD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Dae Won Seo, MD, PhD – Department of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Rationale:
Although sleep disturbances are common in patients with epilepsy, microarousal-related changes have not been thoroughly quantified using polysomnography (PSG). This study aimed to compare arousal indices and sleep stage composition between people with epilepsy (PWE) and individuals with normal PSG findings, while controlling for key demographic and respiratory factors.
Methods:
We retrospectively analyzed PSG data collected at Samsung Medical Center from 2023 to 2024, including 52 PWE and 52 non-epileptic (NE) individuals. To reduce the influence of sleep comorbidities, individuals with an apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) ≥15 or any clinical diagnosis of sleep disorders were excluded. The epilepsy group was subdivided into drug-resistant (n=13) and well-controlled (n=39) subgroups. Generalized linear models were used to compare sleep parameters between groups, adjusting for age, sex, BMI, and AHI.
Results:
Results
Compared to the NE group, PWE exhibited significantly more arousals, increased N1 sleep percentage, and reduced N3 sleep percentage, even after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, and AHI (Table 1). Within the epilepsy group, patients with drug-resistant epilepsy had higher PSQI and BDI scores in unadjusted comparisons; however, these differences were not statistically significant after adjustment—likely due to the small sample size of the drug-resistant subgroup (n=13).
Conclusions:
Conclusion
Our findings demonstrated that PWE experience frequent arousals and disrupted sleep architecture, characterized by a shift toward lighter sleep stages and reduced deep sleep. It suggests that epilepsy intrinsically impairs sleep quality through microarousal-related mechanisms. Future studies with larger samples and advanced EEG analysis techniques are warranted to further clarify the impact of epilepsy on sleep.
Funding: None