Abstracts

Studies in current literature highlight the frequency of psychiatric disorders (PD) among patients with epilepsy. Most of them refer to the temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). We evaluated the frequency of PD in a series of patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) compared with normal controls aiming to verify the prevalence of PD and to correlate them to clinical and sociodemographic variables., One hundred patients with JME accompanied for at least six months at the outpatient epilepsy clinic of Universidade Federal de S[atilde]o Paulo, Brazil, and 100 healthy individuals selected from community were evaluated between December 2005 and April 2006. The groups were paired according to sex, age, schooling and socioeconomic status. The psychiatric evaluation was performed through SCID I, SCID II and global functional scale (GFS), based on DSM-IV. For statistical analysis, the [italic]X[sup2] [/italic]test, Student[apos]s T test and Fisher[apos]s exact test were used. P value [lt] 0.05 was considered significant., Groups were paired in relation to gender (p[gt]0.99), age (p=0.114), schooling (p[gt]0.99) and socioeconomic status (p[gt]0.99). The patients of JME group presented more past psychiatric history (p[lt]0.01), family history of PD (p[lt]0.01) and family history of epilepsy (p[lt]0.01). They also exhibited significantly more PD (p[lt]0.001), personality disorders (p[lt]0.01), worse global functioning (p[lt]0.001) and psychosocial problems (family, economic and occupational) (p[lt]0.001) than the control group. Unemployment was the main psychosocial problem found in the JME group, presented in 31 patients (31%) and significantly higher than in controls (p[lt]0.001). Normal controls had a mean of 23.3[plusmn]3.5 more scores in GFS than JME patients group. PD were found in 49 patients with JME (49%). Anxiety (23 cases; 23%) and humor disorders (19 cases; 19%) were the most frequent diagnoses. Twenty patients (20%) presented criteria for the diagnosis of a personality disorder, most of them of cluster B personalities (histrionic, borderline and passive-aggressive) among axis II diagnosis (85%)., There was a high prevalence of PD among patients with JME when compared to normal subjects from community, paired to sex, age, schooling and socioeconomic status. There was a significant correlation between PD, worse seizure control and worse GFS. The most frequently diagnosed were humor and anxiety disorders. Twenty percent of patients performed criteria for cluster B personality disorders. More studies should be performed aiming to clarify a possible association between these disorders and the physiopathology of JME., (Supported by: CAPES and FAPESP from Brazil.)