Abstracts

Rationale: Some studies demonstrated quality of life (QOL) impairment in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME). However, measures of QOL evaluate patient s personal and subjective perceptions about the disease. Despite growing evidence on the occurrence of poor psychosocial adjustment, to the moment there is no formal assessment of social adjustment (SA) using a validated instrument developed and standardized for this purpose in this group of patients. This study aimed to assess the SA of patients with JME with a valid and objective instrument and to correlate these data with clinical variables of epilepsy.Methods: Forty-two patients with JME were evaluated by the Social Adjustment Scale (SAS) and compared to 42 healthy controls, with no psychiatric and neurological diagnosis, matched by age, gender and social-economic status. Epilepsy clinical variables were: 1. seizure frequency (GTC and myoclonic); 2. epilepsy duration; 3. age of onset and; 4. seizure control and 5. refractoriness. Presence of current and previous psychiatric disorders, family history for epilepsy and psychiatric disorders were also evaluated. We used the Student's 't' test to compare JME patients and controls on SA and Pearson correlation to compare SA scores and clinical variables.Results: Patients with JME showed worse SA factors in work (p=0.032), family relationship (p=0.005) and global SA (p=0.001) when compared to controls. There was a positive correlation between seizure frequency (p=0.035) and refractoriness (p=0.005) with worse SA factor in work; and the presence of psychiatric disorders with worse SA factor in marital relationship (p=0.031) and global SA (p=0.042).Conclusions: Patients with JME had a worse SA compared with control subjects. The factors most affected were work and family relationship. However, other factors such as marital relationship, leisure, domestic life and financial situation were not harmed. Seizure frequency and psychiatric disorders were main factors considering the impariment in social adjustment presented by these patients. This work was supported by: FAPESP/CNPQ.